Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Klaus Zeitler]

>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> I'm having trouble getting Emacs to recognise the <Alt> modifier.
    Jeremy> I'm using Emancs 21.2.1 under Slackware Linux 8.1 and running
    Jeremy> under KDE 3.0.3  I'm using the standard xmodmap from the
    Jeremy> installation with a standard  US 101 key keyboard.

101 keys, is that one that has got no windows keys on it, i.e. only an
Alt on the left and one on the right of the space bar? IIRC than there's no
Meta key defined. Emacs has a special feature to use Alt as Meta if there's no
Meta key, cause Meta is what you need most (besides Ctrl) in emacs.
If that is the case I'd suggest to change one of your Alt keys to Meta
(see xmodmap).

Klaus

-- 
 ------------------------------------------
|  Klaus Zeitler      Lucent Technologies  |
 ------------------------------------------
---
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even
when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Klaus Zeitler]

>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> Klaus Zeitler wrote:
    >>>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:
    Jeremy> 
    >> IIRC than there's no Meta key defined. 
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> I have (at least) 3 ways of generating Meta. Left and right Alt
    Jeremy> and ESC.

right, and that's why I suggested to make one of the two Alt keys a Meta key,
but if you already have 2 Meta keys, than make one Meta key into an Alt
and you're set.

    >> Emacs has a special feature to use Alt as Meta if
    >> there's no Meta key, 
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> Can I disable this behaviour ? If so how ?

once you have a Meta and an Alt key it shouldn't matter.

    Jeremy> I can *already* produce Meta but I *cannot* produce Alt.

try a xmodmap -pm and you'll see if your 2 Alt keys are defined as Meta or
Alt, i.e. one of the mod<nr> keys will have either Alt_L and Alt_R or
Meta_L and Meta_R assigned. Now use one of the mod<nr> modifiers that
have no key assigned. If you're not sure what to do, than post your
xmodmap -pm output and we'll go from there.

Klaus

-- 
 ------------------------------------------
|  Klaus Zeitler      Lucent Technologies  |
 ------------------------------------------
---
Napoleon: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?
          Everything he says is wrong.
Guiseppe: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
          will be right.          -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Bijan Soleymani]

Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:

> Within Emacs however if I do 'C-h k' and press Alt-x, Emacs tells me that it 
> is interpreting this as: M-x runs the command execute-extended-command.....
> 
> How do I tell Emacs that when I press Alt, I really want the Alt- modifier 
> and not the Meta- modifier ? It seems to be getting "mod1" and interpreting 
> this as Meta instead of Alt!!! Or have I mis-understood this also.

In emacs "alt" doesn't really do much of anything. This is what my
(limited) experience with Sun keyboards has shown me (they have
seperate alt and meta keys). Most PCs lack a meta key so emacs uses
"alt" as "meta".

Ctrl and Meta are the standard modifiers in emacs.

Btw I don't know if this helps, but when I set my keyboard in XFree86
to be pc104 instead of pc101, I get "windows keys" as meta and alt as
alt in emacs.

Bijan

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Marco Parrone]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com> writes:

> In emacs "alt" doesn't really do much of anything. This is what my
> (limited) experience with Sun keyboards has shown me (they have
> seperate alt and meta keys). Most PCs lack a meta key so emacs uses
> "alt" as "meta".

That's the point, you can add keybindings with prefix `A-<something>',
without the risk to conflict with the standard keybindings.

But you can use `C-c <something> ...', or `H-<something>' or
`S-<something>' too.

> Ctrl and Meta are the standard modifiers in emacs.
> 
> Btw I don't know if this helps, but when I set my keyboard in XFree86
> to be pc104 instead of pc101, I get "windows keys" as meta and alt as
> alt in emacs.

It is also useful to exchange them using xmodmap, I've done this after
reading about xmodmap here and it's just more confortable, so you can
let the fingers type "automatically" without having the troble to hit
A- instead of M- when you enter in X and vice versa when you come back
to the tty.

- -- 
Marco Parrone - marc0@autistici.org
www.autistici.org/marc0
2143 9E77 D5E6 115A 48AD  A170 D0EE F736 (4E88 99C2)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/>

iD8DBQE+s6qw0O73Nk6ImcIRAkoLAKDMTNErc6BYfpPMSm4ghQRizZm/vQCgjq3p
7giOGuRuz7KyaA37F2Y1xXY=
=dBrT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Kai Großjohann]

Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:

> Other apps seem to recognise <Alt> as seperate from the M- (ESC) key. How 
> can I configure either Emacs or X to recognise this correctly ?

What happens when you do this?

(global-set-key (kbd "<escape> a") 'forward-char)
(global-set-key (kbd "M-a") 'backward-char)

Maybe it gives you different behavior for the two variants.
-- 
file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Kai Großjohann]

Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:

> Kai Großjohann wrote:
>> What happens when you do this?
>> 
>> (global-set-key (kbd "<escape> a") 'forward-char)
>> (global-set-key (kbd "M-a") 'backward-char)
>
> It seems that ESC actually gives me ESC which is then interpreted as Meta as 
> it should be according to the docs.

Did you actually try it?

I just did "emacs -q -no-site-file", then evaled the above
expressions, then tested them.  And ESC a and M-a did different
things!

However, it only works in a window system where Emacs knows the
difference between <escape> and ESC.  These are actually different
things, though Emacs tries hard to make them behave the same.  Here's
the story:

In the old days, there were only ascii terminals, so special function
keys like ESC and RET and TAB were assigned ascii codes (27 and 13
and 9).  And the system could not distinguish ESC from Ctrl-[, nor
RET from Ctrl-M, nor TAB from Ctrl-I.

But now we have real function keys.  But to preserve the old
behavior, whereby C-m and RET always did the same thing, as did TAB
and C-i and ESC and C-[, function-key-map was invented.  It
translates <escape> into ESC (which is the same as C-[).  There is
also additional magic that makes M-x be the same as ESC x, but I
don't know how that works.  It's different magic, I think.

By explicitly binding <escape>, the automatic translation from
<escape> to ESC (via function-key-map) is shadowed.

-- 
file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Stefan Monnier]

>>>>> "Kai" == Kai Großjohann <kai.grossjohann@gmx.net> writes:
> translates <escape> into ESC (which is the same as C-[).  There is
> also additional magic that makes M-x be the same as ESC x, but I
> don't know how that works.  It's different magic, I think.

Yes, that magic is hardcoded in keymap.c (mostly in access_keymap
and Fdefine_key).  Note that it does not apply to Meta + function key,
so ESC a == M-a but M-f8 != ESC f8.

I think it would be interesting to make this less hard-coded and
generalize it so that other modifiers can be mapped to prefixes.


        Stefan

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Ehud Karni]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 01 May 2003 18:15:06 -0400, Stefan Monnier <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@rum.cs.yale.edu> wrote:
>                          
> >>>>> "Kai" == Kai Grossjohann <kai.grossjohann@gmx.net> writes:
> > translates <escape> into ESC (which is the same as C-[).  There is
> > also additional magic that makes M-x be the same as ESC x, but I
> > don't know how that works.  It's different magic, I think.
> 
> Yes, that magic is hardcoded in keymap.c (mostly in access_keymap
> and Fdefine_key).  Note that it does not apply to Meta + function key,
> so ESC a == M-a but M-f8 != ESC f8.
>
> I think it would be interesting to make this less hard-coded and
> generalize it so that other modifiers can be mapped to prefixes.

M-<char> can be different from ESC <char> even in current emacs.
I use the following command:
       (setq meta-prefix-char nil)         ;; no meta char (ESC is escape)
and here are the key description for M-c and ESC c :
  M-c runs the command Alt-C
     which is an alias for `compute' in `FK'.
  ESC c runs the command capitalize-word

Ehud.


- -- 
 Ehud Karni           Tel: +972-3-7966-561  /"\
 Mivtach - Simon      Fax: +972-3-7966-667  \ /  ASCII Ribbon Campaign
 Insurance agencies   (USA) voice mail and   X   Against   HTML   Mail
 http://www.mvs.co.il  FAX:  1-815-5509341  / \
 mailto:ehud@unix.mvs.co.il                  Better  Safe  Than  Sorry
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: use http://www.keyserver.net/ to get my key (and others)

iD8DBQE+sn36LFvTvpjqOY0RAlXMAJ9ZJKUvD9r3dAoyd6XXtw/vKpkWqgCggMVm
SSer/dA+QufpJHOHyjEJO2g=
=ftye
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Stefan Monnier]

>>>>> "Ehud" == Ehud Karni <ehud@unix.mvs.co.il> writes:
> M-<char> can be different from ESC <char> even in current emacs.

That's right, I'd forgotten about `meta-prefix-char', but note that it's
still limited and could use some generalization.


        Stefan

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Alexander Nikolov]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

> >>>>> "Kai" == Kai Großjohann <kai.grossjohann@gmx.net> writes:
> > translates <escape> into ESC (which is the same as C-[).  There is
> > also additional magic that makes M-x be the same as ESC x, but I
> > don't know how that works.  It's different magic, I think.
> 
> Yes, that magic is hardcoded in keymap.c (mostly in access_keymap
> and Fdefine_key).  Note that it does not apply to Meta + function key,
> so ESC a == M-a but M-f8 != ESC f8.
> 
> I think it would be interesting to make this less hard-coded and
> generalize it so that other modifiers can be mapped to prefixes.
> 
> 
>         Stefan

I think that my problem is relevant to the subject of this thread so
I'd post it here.  Does anybody have any clues as to why my Alt key is
working fine as a Meta modifier within X but does not trigger any
action within Emacs on the terminal. ESC is working both ways, but is
somewhat inconvenient.  I'm interested id ESC can be modified in such
a way that it acts _\be_\bx_\ba_\bc_\bt_\bl_\by like a Meta key.

Regards, Alexander

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Kai Großjohann]

Alexander Nikolov <alexander@ip217-30.mnet.bg> writes:

> I think that my problem is relevant to the subject of this thread so
> I'd post it here.  Does anybody have any clues as to why my Alt key is
> working fine as a Meta modifier within X but does not trigger any
> action within Emacs on the terminal. ESC is working both ways, but is
> somewhat inconvenient.  I'm interested id ESC can be modified in such
> a way that it acts _\be_\bx_\ba_\bc_\bt_\bl_\by like a Meta key.

Type M-x (not ESC x) in the terminal, then C-h l.  What do you see?

Which terminal are you using?  For example, xterm and konsole need
mutually exclusive configuration of the Alt/Meta key, so it's
impossible to make it work for both in the same session.  (It works
if you use different keys.  But I prefer to use the same key
always -- the key to the left of the space bar should be Meta,
regardless of what's printed on it.)

-- 
file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Alexander Nikolov]

kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Alexander Nikolov <alexander@ip217-30.mnet.bg> writes:
> 
> > I think that my problem is relevant to the subject of this thread so
> > I'd post it here.  Does anybody have any clues as to why my Alt key is
> > working fine as a Meta modifier within X but does not trigger any
> > action within Emacs on the terminal. ESC is working both ways, but is
> > somewhat inconvenient.  I'm interested id ESC can be modified in such
> > a way that it acts _\be_\bx_\ba_\bc_\bt_\bl_\by like a Meta key.
> 
> Type M-x (not ESC x) in the terminal, then C-h l.  What do you see?
> 
> Which terminal are you using?  For example, xterm and konsole need
> mutually exclusive configuration of the Alt/Meta key, so it's
> impossible to make it work for both in the same session.  (It works
> if you use different keys.  But I prefer to use the same key
> always -- the key to the left of the space bar should be Meta,
> regardless of what's printed on it.)
> 
> -- 
> file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)

When I wrote "terminal" I actually meant the console(tty). When I
write M-x and then C-h l there is no sign of M-x(nor of any other
Meta-combination).

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Alexander Nikolov]

Alexander Nikolov <alexander@ip217-30.mnet.bg> writes:

> kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann) writes:
> 
> > Alexander Nikolov <alexander@ip217-30.mnet.bg> writes:
> > 
> > > I think that my problem is relevant to the subject of this thread so
> > > I'd post it here.  Does anybody have any clues as to why my Alt key is
> > > working fine as a Meta modifier within X but does not trigger any
> > > action within Emacs on the terminal. ESC is working both ways, but is
> > > somewhat inconvenient.  I'm interested id ESC can be modified in such
> > > a way that it acts _\be_\bx_\ba_\bc_\bt_\bl_\by like a Meta key.
> > 
> > Type M-x (not ESC x) in the terminal, then C-h l.  What do you see?
> > 
> > Which terminal are you using?  For example, xterm and konsole need
> > mutually exclusive configuration of the Alt/Meta key, so it's
> > impossible to make it work for both in the same session.  (It works
> > if you use different keys.  But I prefer to use the same key
> > always -- the key to the left of the space bar should be Meta,
> > regardless of what's printed on it.)
> > 
> > -- 
> > file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)
> 
> When I wrote "terminal" I actually meant the console(tty). When I
> write M-x and then C-h l there is no sign of M-x(nor of any other
> Meta-combination).

Now I executed loadkeys -dv from the console and everything is working fine.

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Luis O. Silva]

Hi Jeremy,

On Fri, 02 May 2003 12:33:29 +1200, Jeremy Bowen writes:

   JB> Kai Großjohann wrote:
   >> Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:
   >>
   >>> Kai Großjohann wrote:
   >>>> What happens when you do this?
   >>>>
   >>>> (global-set-key (kbd "<escape> a") 'forward-char)
   >>>> (global-set-key (kbd "M-a") 'backward-char)
   >>>  It seems that ESC actually gives me ESC which is then
   >>> interpreted as Meta as it should be according to the
   >>> docs.
   >>  Did you actually try it?

   JB> Yes. However it is somewhat irrelevant as I don't have
   JB> a problem with ESC or Meta. I have a problem with Alt

   JB> How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Alt> modifier
   JB> ?????

I'm not an expert (I'm almost a complete ignorant in this),
but since you haven't obtained an answer from the experts I'll
try to help you.

AFAIK you won't be able to generate the Alt modifier in
Emacs. You always will obtain the Meta modifier. The Alt
modifier didn't exist in the old terminal and it is *not*
needed in Emacs. Why do you want this modifier? If you need an
alternative modifier, why don't you define Super or Hyper?

Best regards,
luis

-- 
Luis Octavio Silva P.
St. Petersburg State University.
66/3 Botanicheskaya St., Apt.119/2
Stary Peterhof
St. Petersburg, Russia.
+---------------------------------+
|     WE ARE NOT DOING ENOUGH!    |
| We haven't been able to prevent |
|    criminal governments from    |
|    killing people for profit    |
+---------------------------------+

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Kai Großjohann]

Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:

> Yes. However it is somewhat irrelevant as I don't have a problem with ESC or 
> Meta. I have a problem with Alt
>
> How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Alt> modifier ?????

My understanding of your problem was that you wanted different
behaviors from ESC x than from Alt-x.  I gave you different
behaviors.  Does it really matter what they are called in Emacs?

Maybe there is a reason why it matters, but you didn't explain about
it, so I don't know.

Here's an explanation how you can get the Alt modifier.  Let's say
your output from "xmodmap -pm" contains "mod1 Alt_L, Alt_R".  Let's
further say that there is an empty modifier (let the empty modifier be
mod3).  Let's lastly say that there is a key on your keyboard which
you don't need (print screen, scroll lock, or pause come to mind), and
that it has the keycode 4711.  Then write the following into the file
~/.xmodmap:

    keycode 4711 = Meta_L
    add mod3 = Meta_L

Now say "xmodmap ~/.xmodmap".  Then start Emacs.
-- 
file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Klaus Zeitler]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Don't forget to think about financial concerns.  Listen to your anteater today.  You will be in conflict with Scorpio since Pluto has moved into Cancer.  You will meet someone you blessed 3 to 6 times at a party this week.  You'll soon be tired., Size: 2101 bytes --]

>>>>> "Jeremy" == Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> Luis O. Silva wrote:
    JB> How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Alt> modifier
    JB> ?????
    >> 
    >> AFAIK you won't be able to generate the Alt modifier in
    >> Emacs. You always will obtain the Meta modifier. The Alt

if there's no Meta key defined then emacs will use Alt as Meta, once
you have an Meta modifier, ALt can be used too

    >> modifier didn't exist in the old terminal and it is *not*
    >> needed in Emacs. Why do you want this modifier? If you need an
    >> alternative modifier, why don't you define Super or Hyper?
    Jeremy> 
    Jeremy> OK. How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Super> or <Hyper>
    Jeremy> modifier ????

so your xmodmap output tells us you have defined mod1 as Alt and not as Meta

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x6d)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x71)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3
mod4
mod5        Scroll_Lock (0x4e)

IIRC you use a 101 keyboard, i.e. you've got no windows keys etc., i.e.
you could e.g. use one of the Control and Alt keys.

now add to/write to your .xmodmaprc file

--- snip --
clear Control
clear Mod1
keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
keysym Control_R = Hyper_R
add Control = Control_L
add Mod1    = Alt_L
add Mod3    = Meta_R
add Mod4    = Hyper_R
--- snip ---

hope I got this right cause it's been a long time that I played with xmodmap.
This should redefine your right Alt and Control keys to Meta and Hyper.
If you don't use Scroll_Lock or Num_Lock then you can of course also redefine
these keys (that's what I've done and I also removed Caps_Lock and use
that key as super key). Do you know xkeycaps? Once you start playing with
the keycodes you better have this one at hand to go back to the default
key bindings.

HTH

Klaus


-- 
 ------------------------------------------
|  Klaus Zeitler      Lucent Technologies  |
 ------------------------------------------
---
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.  -- Albert Einstein

Re: Help producing the Alt modifier

[Bijan Soleymani]

Jeremy Bowen <jeremyb@opennw.com> writes:

> Luis O. Silva wrote:
>  
> >    JB> How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Alt> modifier
> >    JB> ?????
> > 
> > AFAIK you won't be able to generate the Alt modifier in
> > Emacs. You always will obtain the Meta modifier. The Alt
> > modifier didn't exist in the old terminal and it is *not*
> > needed in Emacs. Why do you want this modifier? If you need an
> > alternative modifier, why don't you define Super or Hyper?
> 
> OK. How do I make the ALT keys generate the <Super> or <Hyper> modifier ????

You can do this using xmodmap. man xmodmap.

I think there is an example of how to make Alt_L (left alt) generate
Meta_L (left meta). I would suspect the same sort of thing could be
used to make Alt_L generate Super or Hyper.

Bijan