Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: YA4.1B
Message-ID: <4393@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 15 Nov 90 20:08:10 GMT
References: <1990Nov13.165058.23107@nas.nasa.gov>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 36

>Well, we finally got 4.1 installed across all of our machines,

Umm, I think you left the "SunOS" out of the "4.1"....

>and the ALT key stuff in our code broke.
>
>I can't seem to be able to get an ALT key event anymore thru a canvas window.
>ALT came thru as a 0x06 in a keyboard event, but now nothing happens.

The fact that the Alt key, in releases prior to 4.1, happened to
generate ^F was a *bug*.  Somebody forgot to put "SHIFTKEY+" into the
translation table entry for the Alt key, so instead of being a modifier
key that set modifier bit 6, it was a ^F key.

That was fixed in 4.1; in 4.1, Alt is a modifier key, as it was always
*supposed* to be. 

>Any suggestions besides returning to 4.0?

1) Fix your software not to assume Alt is an alias for ^F (I very much
   doubt it'll work under, say, Open Windows if it makes that
   assumption; I suspect OW has XK_Alt_L or XK_Alt_R as the keysym for
   that key...).

2) Tell users to type ^F instead of Alt.

3) Construct a file for "loadkeys" that remaps the Alt key:

	key 19	all '\006'

   and run "loadkeys" with that file on all your machines, and also
   arrange that it be run with that file from "/etc/rc.single" after the
   "loadkeys -e" command.

I vote for 1), possibly combined with 2), but if that can't be done, do
3).