can haz emacs with spacecadet keybinds?
hyper super meta shift alt control, ahoy! :D
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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Man, it sure is confusing that apparently some software calls the super key meta. Historically that's alt and a lot of software calls alt meta instead. My brain was bending over backwards reading this article, confused as to why alt and meta were being used simultaneously as though separate until I figured it out.
EDIT: lol, I just noticed apparently the KDE key remapper used meta in place of alt so we've got both uses of meta in the same article and the author went with the keyd definition...
This confused me, too.
Originally, I thought "meta" came from Mac land, and was the curlicue that they get instead of the windows button on many PC keyboards.
I've also often seen a quip that emacs stands for "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift" - I'm a vim user, so I never thought too hard about this, but emacs definitely refers to the Alt key as "Meta", which makes that a contradiction in terms.
I guess all the nomenclature is just made up and nothing matters...
At least in macos the key you're thinking of is called command, not meta. The history of the key names is that originally the space cadet keyboard had 4 modifier keys, control, meta, super, and hyper. When emacs was originally written it was aimed at this keyboard with those modifers. When using a PC keyboard emacs often mapped meta to alt and nothing for super until the windows key was introduced by Microsoft which made it a natural option for super and so the hyper key is the only one that totally died off.
The page doesn't even mention copilot key, which is a clisterf*ck and not mappable by normal means. There is no key up event when letting go, instead there are several key down and key up events when pressing it down. This makes it almost impossible to use as a modifier key for example.
Standard procedure, no? We used to map non-standard keys back in the days. I’d probably map it to Super and use it for my key combinations for my most used software.
Until you realize that cannot be done. Since they completely fd up the f-ing p.o.s. key.
In short, pressing the key you get several key down and key up events. Letting go of the copilot key will produce no events.
You cannot in any sensible way map this to any modifier key. Unless you set some kind of timer, which will never produce the exact same result but something a bit like it.
What's more confusing is that on my laptop pressing the copilot key only sends the key down events and releasing sends the corresponding key up events, which makes it actually usable as a modifier key without resorting to weird timers.
Good for you! From what I hear the implementation and seemingly also key combo can vary. I read an article about someone using timers so that's all I can say about that. I'm staying away from anything with a copilot key so I don't have any experience myself.
Does that mean the copilot key behaves like a key-combination? Sounds like it but maybe I’m misunderstanding.
Yes, normal key is a key down event when pressed and key up event when released.
Copilot key has different functionality AFAIK on different laptops / keyboards. It will fire several key down events followed by release events. When you let go it will not give any events.
Shortly, yes it behaves like a key combo pressed and released in some order.
Thus, there are several lengthy articles for workarounds.
And it is not standard procedure, unfortunately.
Might be usable as a compose key for typing accented characters and such. It wouldn't need to be held for that.