altwin:left_meta_win - super and meta on same key - how to fix
Lionel Élie Mamane <[email protected]> Thu, 21 May 2026 12:08:13 +0200
| Newsgroups | gmane.emacs.help |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi, I'm using GNU Emacs 30.1 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo version 1.18.4, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2025-07-18, from Debian package emacs-lucid version 1:30.1+1-6 on xorg version 1:7.7+24+deb13u1 with xkb-data version 2.42-1. My keyboard is a Microsoft branded one, with menu, left and right "Microsoft Windows logo" keys and emoji key, along with a top bar of "multimedia" keys that are physically distinct from the F1-F12 keys. My /etc/default/keyboard contains XKBMODEL="microsoft4000" XKBLAYOUT="us" XKBVARIANT="euro" XKBOPTIONS="altwin:left_meta_win,compose:menu" BACKSPACE="guess" I've been using altwin:left_meta_win since "forever", certainly since I've had keyboard with "Microsoft Windows logo" keys, which might be as long as I've been using GNU/Linux and X11, a few decades ago. Its effect is to put the meta key on the left "Microsoft Windows logo" key, so that I have separate Meta key (useful in Emacs) and Alt key (that I use mainly for window manager bindings). But now Emacs has started to treat the left Microsoft Windows logo key as meta _and_ super at the same time, so that any binding in emacs that uses Meta is unusable, because emacs will say I pressed M-s-FOO when I pressed left Microsoft Windows logo key + FOO, which used to be just M-FOO. For example, left Microsoft Windows logo key + d, instead of being understood as M-d (bound to kill-word) is being understood as M-s-d and emacs says "M-s-d is undefined". I don't know if the change comes from an upgrade of emacs or of xkb/xorg, as I rarely close my emacs (daemon) or my X11 session (I rebooted for the latest high impact Linux security holes, my uptime before that was > 300 days). I would really really appreciate any hint on how to fix this. Thanks! -- Lionel