this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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What's the Meta key? Is that like the Super key?
I thought it meant the same, Meta/Super/Windows
I saw these used in documentation interchangeably
Meta, Hyper, and Super were all originally different keys. See this lisp machine keyboard from in the 70s that had 7 modifiers, including all of those. Most of the time Hyper or Super are mapped to the Windows key. With Meta it varies more from program to program. A lot of desktop software maps it to the Windows key. In Emacs its usually mapped as Alt or the Esc key.
Thank you for clarification!
I don't really understand how can specific programs map the Meta key as something. Isn't it the job of the driver to map key-presses to input events (which are then passed to display server by
evdev
)?You basically get to choose which modifier key you want to use
I'm not sure if it's directly mapping the input. I think it's getting the other keys input and binding it to the same commands. Also, Emacs was around even before the X windowing system, so they probably came up with the mappings before a lot of these common defaults came about.