Re: xmodmap

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

Paul O'Donnell <odonnellp@rogers.com> writes:

> I am curious about the mod4 line. Why are there 4 entries there?

That's because you have four Alt keys :-)

> Any hints to help me understand this are appreciated. The man pages
> for xmodman are not really clear to me and the online sources I have
> found on xmodmap are very brief. It would be nice to find some better
> docs on this subject.

I wish it was that simple.  The thing is that different programs do
different things.  For example, Netscape (at least up to version 4)
looked at mod1 (in the output of xmodmap -pm, or the programmatic
equivalent) and called that Alt (even if the keysyms there were Meta_L
and Meta_R!).  Emacs, however, looks for Meta_L and/or Meta_R (in the
output of xmodmap -pm) and uses whatever modifier it finds as meta.
If there are no Meta_L or Meta_R keysyms, then Emacs looks for Alt_L
and Alt_R and uses that modifier.

KDE programs look for Alt_L and Alt_R.

xterm looks for Meta_L/R (and, unlike Emacs, does not have an Alt_L/R
fallback).

A funny consequence is that you can't have xterm and Emacs and konsole
(what KDE has instead of xterm) working properly at the same time!

I think They have infiltrated the community of X developers, trying
to drive this fine window system into oblivion.
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!