Re: Why all the Alt bindings by default?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Tim Cross writes:

 > One question I do have - what happens if you do have a keyboard that
 > is setup to have both meta and alt (as well as super and hypa) and you
 > want to do a real alt binding using one of these keys?

Most PC-based systems do define Alt as well as Meta, but good luck
using them if you have a desktop installed: the desktops typically
grab a couple dozen for their own use, leaving Meta free for the
programs.  Also, accessibility features often use Alt to access the
menus (XEmacs does this).  So I would say "binding Alt is not
something that Emacs devs should worry about, although users are
welcome to do it themselves".

As for what happens, I believe translations happen at a lower level
(ie, earlier in the event-processing pipeline) than binding, so to use
those Alt-KEY combinations you would need to disable their
translations as well as bind the keys.