Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!jim
From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Sun function keys [really binding strings to keys for text apps]
Message-ID: <8909191242.AA17680@expo.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 19 Sep 89 12:42:13 GMT
References: <2645@husc6.harvard.edu>
Organization: X Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Lines: 40


	Using xmodmap, is there a way to make the function key generate
	multi-character sequences?

You wouldn't use xmodmap for this, you'd use whatever facility the
application (e.g. xterm or emacs) provides for inserting strings when
particular keys are typed.  Xmodmap is only used to logically "re-etch" key
symbols on top of keys.  The way in which you do this depends upon which
toolkit the application was built.

For applications written with Xt-based toolkits (such as the MIT xterm), this
is  often done by specifying translations.  The R3 xterm has the
following action:

          string(string) Rebinds the key or key sequence to the string
                         value; that is, inserts the string argument
                         into the input stream.  Quotation is
                         necessary if the string contains whitespace
                         or non-alphanumeric characters.  If the
                         string argument begins with the characters
                         ``0x'', it is interpreted as a hex character
                         constant and the corresponding character is
                         sent in the normal way.


For example, the command

    xterm -xrm 'XTerm*VT100.Translations: #override <Key> F1: string("hello")'

pops a window in which pressing F1 causes the string "hello" (without the
quotes) to appear in the input stream.  If this is for something that you use
often, you should put the declaration into your resource database.

You'll probably find that you need to specify translations for each type of
text entry component.  In the MIT release, this includes xterm and the Text
widget.  If you're lucky enough to have a version of GNU emacs that has uses
Xt (there's at least one, but please don't ask me for it) to manage top-level
windows and resources, you can even use translations to drive the internal
gnulisp key bindings (for us naive users of emacs who've forgotten how to
diddle gnuemacs keymaps).