Another #elisp question: Why does #Emacs have separate bits for the meta key (2**27) and alt (2**22)? Aren't they the same key, or is it a remapping thing like the ESC prefix?
@donaldh Yeah, I get that, but when emacs says I need to use the meta key, it's actually alt that I use. I'm guessing this is a remapping because most modern keyboards don't actually have an alt key, in much the same way you can use escape if you don't have an alt key?
not sure but IIRC the lisp machine keyboard distinguishes various special keys like ALT, META, HYPER etc. So on a modern machine they aren't distinguished, but in an alternate computing history we would have these modifiers on our keyboard and could map them differently.
Meta and ALT are not the same key. The original keyboards used long ago had Ctrl, Super, Hyper, Meta, and ALT keys. We now map Meta (i.e. ESC) to the Alt key on our keyboards as a convenience. I do not believe there is a way, on modern keyboards, to have both META and ALT mapped to a key. We can have Super, and Meta. I can't recall if I was able to map Hyper on a modern keyboard.
donaldh
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Ctrl, Alt, Meta, Super and Hyper are all distinct modifier keys in Emacs.
gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/…
gnu.org
www.gnu.orgJonathan Lamothe
in reply to donaldh • •Holger
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Holger • •Howitzer105mm
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •The original keyboards used long ago had Ctrl, Super, Hyper, Meta, and ALT keys. We now map Meta (i.e. ESC) to the Alt key on our keyboards as a convenience. I do not believe there is a way, on modern keyboards, to have both META and ALT mapped to a key. We can have Super, and Meta. I can't recall if I was able to map Hyper on a modern keyboard.
Jonathan Lamothe likes this.