alt and backspace issues

[Brian Desany]

There is a lot of information out there on this, but I couldn't find
anything that worked for me.

I am trying to run version 21.2.1 in X-window mode (I think thats what
you call it - I am NOT using the -nw option). There are two problems
(so far):

1. The ALT key is not being recognized as the meta key, and

2. The backspace and delete keys are both triggering 'delete-char'. I
have verified that neither of C-h c and C-h l are seeing a distinction
between these 2 keys. So the Delete key is doing what I expect but the
Backspace key is not (I expect it to delete to the left).

If I run emacs -nw, then both problems go away (i.e. Backspace and Alt
both work as expected), but I get a new problem: C-h acts like Delete
and C-? acts like undo. FWIW this is just like how the bash shell
behaves.

Are these things reflecting some common underlying problem? In
X-window mode, how can I get Delete to delete-char, backspace to
delete-backward-char, Alt to be Meta and C-h to start help?

Thanks-
-Brian.