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Suddenly, I am not able to use any combination of meta keys. The Alt key is not working at all in my emacs. Can anyone help me on this issue?

Braiam
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NeoJi
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  • A quick workaround is that hitting escape before another key acts as Meta+key_you_pressed. It's better to figure out what's causing the problem but hopefully this helps for the time being. – Dason Dec 12 '11 at 18:41
  • @Dason Thanks for the comment. It works, but only once. I have to hit escape every time before any Meta command. Weird. I wish I can find what is causing this. – NeoJi Dec 12 '11 at 18:54
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    Could it be that the terminal window is capturing Alt and attempting to use it to access it's menus (eg: File, Edit, etc..) – drevicko Mar 02 '12 at 04:16

3 Answers3

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I fixed this in my Ubuntu Terminal app by going in the menu: Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts and deselecting the 'Enable menu access keys (such as Alt+F to open the File menu)'.

penreturns
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Stephen
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On Gnome 42.4+ you have a keyboard setting that might be enabled by default for using alternate characters on your keyboard.

Go to:

  • Settings
  • Keyboard
  • Click on the "Alternate Character Key" option
  • In the popup, select another alternate character key other than left alt

I choose "Right Menu" since I don't even have a menu key on my keyboard but you can choose anything else besides "Left Alt" which is the key that is used to some shortcuts in Emacs.

I was having trouble using the Meta key in Emacs because of that parameters and now it is working as intended since I changed the alternate character key.

Amin NAIRI
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My VNC server had to be restarted with an extra option -compatiblekbd like this example:

vncserver -geometry 2549x1476 :17 -compatiblekbd

Once I added that and restarted my server, the meta key started working as I expect it to.

Note that -compatiblekbd must come after the display number (e.g. :17) or it is interpreted as an argument to -compatiblekbd.

WilliamKF
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