Modifier keys not recognized in Emacs 23.0.0NS-9.0rc2 [Ubuntu Linux 7.10 using GNUstep]

[Maurizio Tomasi]

I have compiled Emacs.app 23.0.0 (9.0rc2) under GNUstep (Ubuntu Linux 
7.10), and have some problems in getting my modifier keys working 
properly. Both problems do not occur with the emacs version (22.1.1) 
packaged with Ubuntu (compiled with the Gtk libraries, no GNUstep 
support). In this mail, I will refer to GNUstep Email as "Email.app".


1. THE ALT KEY

When I press "Alt+<some key>", Emacs.app does not detect the Alt key 
and inserts the plain key in the buffer (e.g. Alt-X inserts "X"). 
Pressing "C-h c" and then "Alt+<some key>" shows that only <some key> 
has indeed been detected. The Alt key seems not to work at all under 
Emacs. (Note that I configured GNUstep to use my "Windows" key as the 
command key, so there should be no conflict with GNUstep).

Note that I am able to overcome this problem by pressing "ESC <key>".


2. THE ALTGR KEY

My italian keyboard layout produces {} using key combinations with 
Shift+AltGr, e.g. to produce "}" I press Shift+AltGr+*. This is 
Ubuntu's default for italian keyboards, and it is a common setting 
among other Linux distributions as well.

These keys work fine under X and GNUstep applications (such as 
Terminal.app and GNUMail), but under Emacs.app pressing Shift+AltGr+* 
produces a plain "*" instead of "}". It is worth to note that to 
produce "]" I have to press AltGr+*, and this works perfectly even 
under Emacs.app!

Fortunately, there is an alternative key sequence that produces {}, 
namely AltGr+7 and AltGr+0, and this works even under Emacs (because 
it does not use a Shift+AltGr sequence).


MY CONFIGURATION

I am running GNUstep under Linux Ubuntu 7.10 on a i386 laptop (Acer 
Aspire 1694Wlmi), and have set the command key to the "Windows key" of 
my keyboard. Here is the output of "defaults read | grep GSFirst":

NSGlobalDomain GSFirstAlternateKey Alt_R
NSGlobalDomain GSFirstCommandKey Super_L
NSGlobalDomain GSFirstControlKey Control_L

I have downloaded the Emacs.app source package and compiled it using 
the "nextstep/compile" script. All the GNUstep packages were installed 
using Ubuntu packages, including the development libraries:

gnustep-base-common (1.13.0-7)
gnustep-base-runtime (1.13.0-7)
libaddresses-dev (0.4.6-8)
libaddresses0 (0.4.6-8)
libaddressview-dev (0.4.6-8)
libaddressview0 (0.4.6-8)
libgnustep-base-dev (1.13.0-7)
libgnustep-base1.13 (1.13.0-7)
libgnustep-base1.13-dbg (1.13.0-7)
libgnustep-gui-dev (0.11.0-2)
libgnustep-gui0.11 (0.11.0-2)
libgnustep-gui0.11-dbg (0.11.0-2)
libpantomime1.2 (1.2.0~pre2.dfsg-2)
libpantomime1.2-dev (1.2.0~pre2.dfsg-2)
libpopplerkit-dev (0.0.20051227svn-4ubuntu1)
libpopplerkit0 (0.0.20051227svn-4ubuntu1)
librenaissance0 (0.8.0-10)
librenaissance0-dev (0.8.0-10)

The information about Emacs.app (compiled from sources) are:

GNU Emacs 23.0.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, *Step 9.0-rc2) of 2007-11-02 on 
tomasi-laptop

configured using `configure '--with-ns' '--without-x' '--prefix=' 
'--exec-prefix=/home/tomasi/emacs-23.0.0_NS-9.0rc2/nextstep/build/Emacs.app' 
'--libexecdir=/home/tomasi/emacs-23.0.0_NS-9.0rc2/nextstep/build/Emacs.app/libexec' 
'--with-pop' '--enable-font-backend' '--without-freetype' 'CFLAGS=-g 
-O2''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Best regards,
  Maurizio Tomasi.