Re: Xfree86 and the Meta key (+patch)

[Jan D.]

> > If there is no need for these fake keys (I am not sure what they do),
> > you could set altwin:meta_win and then do
> >
> > % xmodmap -e 'remove mod4 = Hyper_L' -e 'remove mod4 = Super_L'
> > and get the same behaviour as previous X versions.
>
> Since XFree86 4.3, major changes were introduced in XKB configuration
> which are incompatible with emacs.  Our problem in Debian is that many
> users complain about this incompatiblity, and we want to fix it so that
> these users do not have to run xmodmap themselves.

I understand that.  I just mentioned as a fix when upgrading to a 
patched
Emacs is not an option.

> A solution is to change modifier mappings in XKB files.  If you are
> an XKB guru and are able to hack configuration files so that all
> combinations of keymaps still work, please join us ;)

No, it is mostly Greek to me :-).  Anyway, that does not fix non-debian
systems.

> As shortcuts cannot work if a modifier is bound to different symbols,
> another solution is to let emacs handle this case in a smarter way.
> This is the purpose of the patch sent by Jerome; when a modifier is
> bound to different symbols, only one is taken into account.  There is 
> no
> change for working configurations, and many configurations which are
> currently broken will work out of the box without having to run 
> xmodmap.

I am testing the patch and something like it will be checked in.  But
it would be nicer if Emacs could determine that Hyper and Super
is bound to fake keys and just ignore them.  I'm currently using XKB
to get geometry info to determine that, but I wonder if there is a 
better
way.  The reason I want this is that with the proposed patch the logo
key becomes Super on my system, which is not really helpful either.
If we could determine that Super is a fake key it would become Meta 
which
is so much better.

        Jan D.