Bug#257044: gnome-core: Alt keys not being treated as meta keys

[Brett Smith]

Package: gnome-core
Version: 55
Severity: normal

I realize that this may not be a problem with gnome-core specifically;
however, I can notice it in several GNOME applications, and nowhere else.
If this bug is somewhere else, and you can point me in the right direction,
I'd very much appreciate it.

With a recent dist-upgrade, some GNOME applications started treating my Alt
keys as regular keys, rather than meta keys.

When I try to set keybindings with gnome-keybinding-properties, I can't set
keybindings with "Alt" in them, because the program treats that key as the
main key of the keybinding.  So, if I try to set Control+Alt+d as a
keybinding, I'll get just "Alt_L" or "<Control>Alt_L" instead.  The same
thing happens with my right Alt key.

My old keybindings with Alt in them still work, but they have weird side
effects.  For example, if I try to move around my workspaces with
Control+Alt+<arrow key>, Metacity will leave the workspace popup open even
after I've released all the keys; it won't go away until I press another
key or click the mouse.  Likewise if I Alt+Tab; the window listing will
remain and eat the next input after I let go of the keys.

I realize various program configurations of mine may have something to do
with this; if you can let me know what you need to diagnose this problem,
I'll be happy to provide it.  Here's the keyboard section of my
XF86Config-4:

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Generic Keyboard"
	Driver		"keyboard"
	Option		"CoreKeyboard"
	Option          "XkbOptions"      "ctrl:nocaps"
EndSection

It's mostly a standard US 101-key keyboard; it's a little weird because
it's on a laptop (IBM ThinkPad T21), so things are squished, but I don't
think that would matter here.

I'm not running xmodmap or any other programs I know of that would muck
with my keyboard settings.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated; thanks in advance.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.26
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages gnome-core depends on:
ii  bug-buddy                     2.6.1-3    The GNOME Desktop Environment's bu
ii  eog                           2.6.1-0.4  Eye of Gnome graphics viewer progr
ii  gedit                         2.6.1-1    light-weight text editor
ii  gnome-applets                 2.6.1-7    Various applets for GNOME 2 panel 
ii  gnome-control-center          1:2.6.1-7  The GNOME Control Center for GNOME
ii  gnome-icon-theme              1.2.3-1    GNOME Desktop icon theme
ii  gnome-panel                   2.6.2-1    Launch and/or dock GNOME 2 applica
ii  gnome-session                 2.6.1-6    The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  gnome-terminal                2.6.1-4    The GNOME 2 terminal emulator appl
ii  metacity                      1:2.8.1-3  A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii  nautilus                      2.6.3-3    file manager and graphical shell f
ii  scrollkeeper                  0.3.14-8   A free electronic cataloging syste
ii  yelp                          2.6.1-2    Help browser for GNOME 2

-- no debconf information