Make the Alt key work in OpenOffice103 and X11Beta3

Jul 08, '03 10:35:00AM

Contributed by: Hulot

I really appreciate the big effort from the OOo.org mac porting team to release the GM of OpenOffice for X11. I expericened one annoying bug: The alt/option key does not work as intended. You cannot activate the menus form the OOo with Alt. The problem is X11 and not OOo. Here is my solution:

  1. Open xterm/Terminal in X11
  2. Type pico to start the pico editor

  3. Type this code:
    clear Mod1
    keycode 66 = Alt_L
    keycode 69 = Alt_R
    add Mod1 = Alt_L
    add Mod1 = Alt_R
    
  4. Enter Control-O to save this as .xmodmap in your home folder (/users -> username -> .xmodmap).

  5. Use Control-X to quit pico

  6. Quit X11

  7. Restart X11 and start OpenOffice.org 103
If you'd like to revert to the default X11Beta keys, remove .xmodmap from your home folder.

I think the X11 standard generally use Apple Option key as a compose key for entering foreign and special characters, and so does the default setting in X11Beta3.

Comments (18)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030704084450466