Happy Hacking keyboard, Emacs, and meta

Leonidas Tsampros ltsampros at upnet.gr
Mon Oct 10 00:19:42 PDT 2005


On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 04:41:42PM -0500, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> I have an older PS2 Happy Hacking Lite Keyboard (love it!), but I'm getting 
> reacquainted with Emacs and one aspect of the keyboard is driving me nuts: I 
> can't seem to get the diamond keys (like "Windows keys") to send only Meta to 
> Emacs.
> 
> I use KDE on FreeBSD 6.0-BETA5 and have it set to run "setxkbmap -option 
> -option altwin:meta_win" at login.  If I run "xev" and press those keys, I 
> see events like:
> 
> KeyPress event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x4000001,
>     root 0x9e, subw 0x0, time 110894777, (1067,874), root:(1071,907),
>     state 0x0, keycode 115 (keysym 0xffe7, Meta_L), same_screen YES,
>     XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XFilterEvent returns: False
> 
>   ... and ...
> 
> KeyPress event, serial 26, synthetic NO, window 0x4000001,
>     root 0x9e, subw 0x0, time 110914901, (651,795), root:(655,828),
>     state 0x0, keycode 116 (keysym 0xffe8, Meta_R), same_screen YES,
>     XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XFilterEvent returns: False
> 
> However, if I run Emacs and type C-h k (describe-key) and then M-a, for 
> example, I get the error message "H-M-s-a is undefined" as though the 
> keyboard is sending Hyper-Meta-shift(?)-a instead.
> 
> I'd like to get this fixed ASAP, as using ESC for Meta for the rest of my life 
> doesn't seem too appealing.

When i use xterm , i have the following resource set:

	[-xrm] 'XTerm*metaSendsEscape: true'

This one really helps when you've got to play with emacs or irssi.


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