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From: JSPARKES%BNR.CA@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey  Sparkes, J.D.)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Alt vs. Meta in Xt translations
Message-ID: <9007202152.AA04369@expo.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 20 Jul 90 19:01:00 GMT
Sender: Jeffrey (J.D.) Sparkes <JSPARKES%BNR.CA@mitvma.mit.edu>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 25

> >     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.