Re: Right Alt/Meta keys on Windows systems

[Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

 > Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
 >...
 > I run Windows XP.
 > 
 > > If you are running Windows/XP then you should go to the Control
 > > Panel and select "Regional and Language Options" and let us know
 > > where any pulldowns on any tabs show anything but "United States
 > > (English)".
 > 
 > It says "English (United States)", but under "Location" below it says
 > "Israel".  Which is what I want: I want an Israeli locale, but I want
 > English as the UI interface.
 > 
 > Aha, I think I know what is the source of your problem.  In the
 > "Regional and Language Options", press the "Languages" tab, then click
 > "Details".  In the dialog that pops up, click the "Key Settings"
 > button and look for an entry that uses the right Alt key.  If you can
 > get along without that function, disable it, which will change its key
 > to "None", and I think your right Alt key will behave as Meta.
 > 
 > > For example if you use a Hebrew input method that just
 > > happens to make the right Alt key work like a Meta modifier, that
 > > would be good to know.
 > 
 > No, my Key Settings dialog described above does not list any function
 > that is bound to the right Alt; the function "Switch to English-US"
 > has "None" listed as its key binding.

Mine too.  How weird.  And very distressing.  Of course, I set my
location to Israel just to see if it made a difference.  It does not.
But then I probably need to reboot. :-) ... reboot has no effect.

...

Rather than hit ^C^C I went back to the XP box and probed around.  It
would appear that something in the Accessibility Options on the
Control Panel called "StickyKeys" is the ticket.  I turned the
"StickyKeys" option on and got the desired behavior.  Do a search in
the Help tool for "sticky keys" to get the gory details if you are
interested.

Thanks for shedding light on this issue.

-pmr