Meta- and Alt- on gnome-terminal

[Amit Kumar <amit kumar ffnet com>]

        hi,

        i'm grappling with the eccentricities of keymapping on X,
        specifically Alt- and Meta- handling, and i had a couple of
        questions/comments/bug report/feature requests.

        (btw, i've already deja'ed, faq'ed, and archive-searched
        related topics)

        On my keyboard, the default map maps the windows key to Meta-,
        and alt key to Alt- according to xkeycaps. in emacs,
        i'm able to use the windows key as Meta-; in fact, F1-k in
        emacs idenitifies the window key, properly, as M- (say when i
        do F1-k-windows key pressed-m, it shows M-m)

        however, on gnome-terminal, things seem to be rather
        different. when i run emacs -nw, F1-k for
        "windows-key-pressed-m" shows the function for "m", while F1-k
        for "alt-key-pressed-m" shows the function for "ESC m"!

        when i use xkeycaps to swap the alt- and windows- keys (i
        like them that way), the situation is reversed, with
        gnome-terminal now mapping alt-key- to ESC-.

        is this the right behavior? please enlighten me!

        amit