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From: garyo@THINK.COM (Gary Oberbrunner)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: R4 xterm modmap strangeness
Message-ID: <9001090107.AA08552@prometheus.think.com>
Date: 9 Jan 90 01:07:36 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 54

I'm running vanilla R4 on a color Sun 4/110.  The tests I describe below
are with no window manager, no resource database, just straight
out-of-the-box X.

The major symptom is that my shell (tcsh), which runs in cbreak mode and
eats 8-bit characters (hi bit == META), doesn't work properly with xmodmap
and xterm.  Here's the scenario:

- Fire up X with vanilla xinit, nothing extra.  Get an xterm.
- Fire up a couple more xterms (all these are running tcsh).
: At this point, all the xterms accept control and meta chars.
- run xmodmap with the following map:
    remove lock = Caps_Lock
    remove mod1 = Meta_L
    remove mod1 = Meta_R
    add mod1 = Caps_Lock
    add mod1 = Alt_R
    add control = Meta_L
    add control = Meta_R
: Now, all the existing xterms have their keys rebound to the new
  control and meta keys.  So far just fine.
- Start up a new xterm.
: This new xterm doesn't accept any control keys (it just beeps, as if
  it weren't actually seeing the keys I'm typing but something else
  instead), and the meta keys do nothing - unaldulterated normal keys
  come out instead (M-f inserts an f).
- Any new xterms started up now will have this problem.

If I start up 'cat' and type at it, things seem fine (no meta chars,
of course).  The control chars appear fine.  Ditto with vi.  Emacs running
in the new xterm window (the one with the trashed meta, etc.) seems to
think that the caps lock has been turned off, but (strangely) my
control key AND the old meta key have been turned into control-meta
keys!  No wonder tcsh is barfing, if indeed that's the story.  It's
getting all these meta chars when I think I'm typing controls.  So it's
as if the xmodmap worked partially or something.  What gives?

All this stuff worked like a charm under R3.  What is different?
Could it be related to the insert-eight-bit and insert-seven-bit actions?
I tried various combos of those, but nothing seemed to help.
And why do xterms started before the modmap get the correct mods but not
the ones started after the modmap?

I'd appreciate any insights or pointers before I go snorking around in the
xterm sources.  Thanks loads, in advance.

                                - Gary Oberbrunner
                                Thinking Machines Corporation
                                245 First St
                                Cambridge, MA 02142
                                garyo@think.com

p.s: is there any way to reset the default modmap if you've screwed it up
beyond recognition?