Message-Id: <m0w2rou-0008gkC@g62-99.citenet.net>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 00:03:52 -0500 (EST)
From: Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>
To: submit@bugs.debian.org
Subject: X key binding of shift tab on XFree86 3.2 (ISO_Left_Tab)

Package: xbase
Version: 3.2-3

In GNU Emacs 19.34.1 (i386-debian-linux-gnu, X toolkit) of Wed Aug 28 1996 on maneki-neko
configured using `configure  --prefix=/usr --with-pop=yes --with-x=yes --with-x-toolkit=lucid i386-debian-linux'

On Xfree86 3.2 (actually 3.2A with some patches, but i'm pretty sure it isn't
relevant) seems to bind tab by default such that shift-tab generates
"ISO_Left_Tab" which i've never heard of, but presumably emacs should
interpret that as the emacs key binding "backtab" or perhaps just ignore it
and handle it as shift-tab. I'm partial to the former, but then i suggested
emacs should map shift-tab to backtab if it's bound in any case, which you
didn't like.

It also seems like XLookupString should probably generate a TAB character so
that programs can notice that it's a tab character with the shift modifier
pressed but i'm not really sure if that's the right approach.

Here's some relevant output from xmodmap -pk and xev:

23         0xff09 (Tab)    0xfe20 (ISO_Left_Tab)   

KeyPress event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x1c00001,
    root 0x2b, subw 0x0, time 3006375125, (129,32), root:(210,113),
    state 0x1, keycode 23 (keysym 0xfe20, ISO_Left_Tab), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 characters: ""