How do I prevent xfce terminal from grabbing the Alt key?

[Mike Massonnet]

2010/11/2 Chris G <cl at isbd.net>:
> On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 08:36:57PM +0100, Mike Massonnet wrote:
>> 2010/11/2 Chris G <cl at isbd.net>:
>> > On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 05:37:44PM +0100, Mike Massonnet wrote:
>> >> Hi Chris,
>> >>
>> >> 2010/11/2 Chris G <cl at isbd.net>:
>> >> > How can I stop xfce terminal (i.e. xfce4-terminal) from grabbing the Alt
>> >> > key for its own purposes?
>> >>
>> >> Did you had a look in the preferences dialog? Edit > Preferences.
>> >>
>> >> There is an option in the Shortcuts pane "Disable all menu access keys".
>> >>
>> > Yes, I tried that and it had no effect at all.  I've just checked again
>> > and that box is checked and I most definitely can't use the left Alt key
>> > in the xfce4-terminal.  If I run (for example) an xterm *from* the
>> > xfce4-terminal then the Alt key works as expected in the xterm window.
>> > So it's not my environment causing the problem, its xfce4-terminal.
>>
>> Can you please tell us what version you are using (I remember having a
>> bug with git at a moment, but not lately). Plus let us know what
>> shortcut is not working as expected, is it Alt+<LETTER> or only a
>> niche shortcut, currently it is known that Alt+Shift+<NUMBER> switches
>> the notebook tab.
>>
>> If you run from git, can you pull and rebuild first?
>>
> I'm running the default xfce4-terminal on xubuntu 10.04, i.e. the one
> installed from the standard repositories.
>
> It reports itself that it is: Terminal 0.4.3.
>
> It's not that shortcuts are not working, it's that xfce4-terminal is
> 'stealing' any key entered with the left Alt key. So instead of getting
> a character appearing when I hit Alt + <a key> I get nothing in almost
> every case.  So, for example, if I'm in an old-fashioned xterm and I
> hold the Alt key down and hit each key across the bottom of the keyboard
> I get a series of characters as follows:-
>
>    Üúøãöâîí¬®¯
>
> (in case the intervening mail systems are not perfect that's:-
>    U with an umlaut
>    u with an acute accent
>    o with a line through it
>    a with a squiggly thing on top
>    o with an umlaut
>    a with a circumflex accent
>    i with a circumflex accent
>    i with an acute accent
>    line with a corner
>    "Registered" symbol
>    Overline
>
> If I do the same in an xfce4-terminal I get *nothing*.

Weird, I never noticed something like that in Xterm, I'll have to try.
But it sounds like this is Xterm specific and has nothing to do with
Terminal "stealing" the Alt key.

Did you try to use "Alt Gr" instead of "Alt"? I believe the problem
will reproduce with any VTE based terminal, for example gnome-terminal
or sakura. If you type "AltGr + r" it should print ®, or "AltGr + c"
produces ©.

On a side note, if you run a ncurses application like
midnight-commander (mc) inside Terminal, Alt should work as expected
to open menus, etc.

Kind Regards
-- 
Mike