how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[Badari Kakumani]

folks,

my emacs on windows xp thinks Alt key to be Meta key (escape key).

is there a way to tell my emacs to distinguish between the two?

i have already tried
   (setq w32-pass-alt-to-system t)
and that did not help.

thanks for your help.

-badari

Re: how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[Peter Lee]

>>>> Badari Kakumani writes:

    > my emacs on windows xp thinks Alt key to be Meta key (escape key).
    > is there a way to tell my emacs to distinguish between the two?

,----[ C-h v w32-alt-is-meta RET ]
| w32-alt-is-meta is a variable defined in `C source code'.
| Its value is t
| 
| Documentation:
| Non-nil if the alt key is to be considered the same as the meta key.
| When nil, Emacs will translate the alt key to the Alt modifier, and not Meta.
| 
| [back]
`----

Re: how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[Badari Kakumani]

Thank you very much peter.

you made my day.

the solution you suggested works.

thanks,
-badari

Re: how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[Lennart Borgman]

Peter Lee wrote:
>>>>> Badari Kakumani writes:
>>>>>           
>
>     > my emacs on windows xp thinks Alt key to be Meta key (escape key).
>     > is there a way to tell my emacs to distinguish between the two?
>
> ,----[ C-h v w32-alt-is-meta RET ]
> | w32-alt-is-meta is a variable defined in `C source code'.
> | Its value is t
> | 
> | Documentation:
> | Non-nil if the alt key is to be considered the same as the meta key.
> | When nil, Emacs will translate the alt key to the Alt modifier, and not Meta.
> | 
> | [back]
> `----
>   
You may also be interested in the patched version of Emacs that you can 
get with the EmacsW32+Emacs installer. With this patched version of 
Emacs you can use the windows keys as Emacs META. See

   http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32Util.html#alt-war

Re: how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[B. T. Raven]

"Badari Kakumani" <badarisj@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1138635216.941306.81310@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> folks,
>
> my emacs on windows xp thinks Alt key to be Meta key (escape key).
>
> is there a way to tell my emacs to distinguish between the two?
>
> i have already tried
>    (setq w32-pass-alt-to-system t)
> and that did not help.
>
> thanks for your help.
>
> -badari
>

But where did you find a keyboard with a Meta key? Esc works as a Meta key
but it is too far from the home keys to be useful for frequent use. Thanks
for the question though. I want to let Alt function as Meta since Meta is
more commonly used than Alt. I already have the right and left window keys
as Super and the App-Menu key as Hyper. I might as well make Esc into Alt.
Does anyone how this can be done and in general whether keybindings must
be undone (deallocated or whatever) before a new one is setup? Is the old
one just masked by the new one? Is the memory used to set up the old
binding recovered by garbage collection?

Thanks,

Ed, not a progammer

Re: how to customize Alt key for emacs on windows xp

[Badari Kakumani]

hi ed,

i use Esc as my meta key and am used to it. in addition i had bunch of
other customizations associated to the Alt key.

till recently i had been using
emacs primarily on unix machine that i was accessing thru my laptop
running vnc-client (and unix machine running the vncserver).

recently i started using emacs on my laptop (windows-xp) and felt it
too
inconvenient to lose all my Alt customization keys.

not sure what right and left window keys are. are you referring to the
arrow keys? what are Super and App-Menu key keys?

thanks,
-badari