Re: M-TAB already used by KDE

[kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann)]

marcel-sl@gmx.de (Marcel Schmittfull) writes:

> I use KDE and therefore the keybinding M-<TAB> is already used for
> switching between windows. Unfortunately there are several emacs modes
> which try to use M-<TAB> for completion (f.e. lisp-mode, AUCTeX, ...).
> However, the KDE setting seems to be "stronger" than the emacs setting
> and hence I can only switch between windows with M-<TAB>. 

One possibility is to use C-M-i instead of M-TAB.  This is not ideal,
I know.  The new KDE is supposed to be able to coexist with Emacs
better, but I find it's still not done, in KDE 3.0 at least.

I've written a little patch for Emacs (which will be in 21.4, whenever
that comes out) that allows you to tell Emacs to swap Alt and Meta.

With that patch, I use it as follows.  The keys labeled Alt generate
the Alt_L and Alt_R keysyms, the key(s) with a flag on them generate(s)
Meta_L (and Meta_R).  Then KDE sees the Alt keys as Alt and the flag
keys as "Win".  Then I can configure the KDE keybindings ("shortcuts")
so that Win-Tab can be used instead of Alt-Tab to switch between
windows.  (This is new in KDE 3 I think.)

And also, I tell Emacs to swap Alt and Meta.

Then I can use the keys labeled Alt as Meta keys in Emacs.

To find the patch you can look on savannah.gnu.org for the Emacs CVS
code.  The file is src/xterm.c and you can find it by scanning the
logs for my name.  This patch can be extracted from CVS and applied to
Emacs 21.2 (I've tested it with the 21.2.93 pretest which I'm
currently using, so I presume it works with 21.2 as well).
-- 
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