jsparkes@bcars85.bnr.ca (Jeff Sparkes) (07/20/90)
What is the difference between Alt and Meta in Xt translations? My NCD X terminal defines Alt_L and Alt_R, but it seems that xedit uses Meta in it translation table, so it doesn't work. Also, do different servers distinguish Alt_R and Alt_L? I have some translations for xterm of the form "Alt<Key>x:" which work on the NCD running their server version 2.1.0, but don't work on a Sun4 running X11R4. What I really need is a keyboard independent way of specifying Alt or Meta. -- Jeff Sparkes jsparkes@bnr.ca Another feature is that the seats float, so that the airline can recover them if the plane crashes into the ocean. -- Dave Barry
swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick) (07/20/90)
What is the difference between Alt and Meta in Xt translations? They are (just) different pairs of KeySyms; no special meaning is attached to either. There is also an abbreviation symbol ("$") which can be used in a key sequence to indicate that the modifier key assigned to Meta_L or Meta_R must be asserted. No such abbreviation exists for Alt_*. My NCD X terminal defines Alt_L and Alt_R, but it seems that xedit uses Meta in it translation table, so it doesn't work. You need to use xmodmap to assign one or more keys to the Meta_L and Meta_R keysyms and then assign these same keys to a free modifier bit. If you chose to use the Alt keys as both Meta and Alt keys, then one possible sequence to do this is: % xmodmap -e "keysym Alt_L = Alt_L Meta_L" -e "keysym Alt_R = Alt_R Meta_R" (assuming Alt is already assigned as a modifier key).
JSPARKES%BNR.CA@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Sparkes, J.D.) (07/21/90)
> > What is the difference between Alt and Meta in Xt translations? > > They are (just) different pairs of KeySyms; no special meaning is attached > to either. There is also an abbreviation symbol ("$") which can be > used in a key sequence to indicate that the modifier key assigned to > Meta_L or Meta_R must be asserted. No such abbreviation exists for Alt_*. > > > > My > > NCD X terminal defines Alt_L and Alt_R, but it seems that xedit uses Meta > in > > it translation table, so it doesn't work. > > > > You need to use xmodmap to assign one or more keys to the Meta_L and > > Meta_R keysyms and then assign these same keys to a free modifier bit. > > If you chose to use the Alt keys as both Meta and Alt keys, then > > one possible sequence to do this is: > > % xmodmap -e "keysym Alt_L = Alt_L Meta_L" -e "keysym Alt_R = Alt_R Meta_R" > > (assuming Alt is already assigned as a modifier key). > > > I didn't want to have to rely on xmodmap to make my application work. What I ended up doing was specifying translations like "Mod1<Key>..", which worked fine. I.e NCD maps Alt_[LR] to mod1, and the sun Xservers maps Meta_[LR] to mod1.