Re: Meta key, Alt key & ESC

[Kai Großjohann]

Bertram Scharpf <b.scharpf@tesionmail.de> writes:

> Under Debian/GNU Linux my Emacs Meta key is the one
> between `Control_L' and `Alt_L'. But from SuSE
> Linux I am used `Alt_L' to be the Meta key. Now I don't
> want to change my Debian `.Xmodmap'; rather I want Emacs
> to accept the `Alt_L' in one of the following manners:

Metaphorically speaking Emacs looks for Meta_L and/or Meta_R in the
output of "xmodmap -pm" and considers the modifier it finds there as
the meta modifier.  If there is no Meta_{L,R} in the output of
"xmodmap -pm" (metaphorically speaking), then Emacs looks for Alt_L
and Alt_R instead.

You say that you don't want to frob .Xmodmap.  Why not?  Maybe it's
because you don't want the key next to the spacebar to change (that
generates Alt_L I think).  So you could frob .Xmodmap to assign
another keysym (other than Meta_L), say Super_L or Hyper_L to the key
with a flag on it.  Then there will be no Meta_{L,R} in the output of
"xmodmap -pm", and so Emacs will use Alt_{L,R}.

If you really really REALLY do not want to change .Xmodmap, you can
consider installing Emacs from CVS.  It contains a patch that defines
variables x-meta-keysym and x-alt-keysym which allow to swap the meta
and alt modifiers:

(setq x-meta-keysym 'alt
      x-alt-keysym  'meta)

That's what I do, but I want to change it to use another mechanism
instead: I will just remove Meta_{L,R} from the keymap.
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!