[X-Unix] How to use ESC as Meta in Enhanced Carbon Emacs?

[Benjamin L. Russell]

--- "William H. Magill" <magill at mcgillsociety.org>
wrote:

> On 19 Sep, 2004, at 03:59, Benjamin L. Russell
> wrote:
> > In the /Applications/Utilities/Keycaps
> application,
> > when I press the "Escape" key by itself, usually
> > nothing happens (I write "usually" because if I
> hold
> > "Escape" for a few seconds, then Keycaps registers
> the
> > key-press, and if I then press "Escape" quickly
> > immediately afterwards, sometimes this key-press
> also
> > registers).
> 
> This sounds more and more like a hardware problem --
> a bad keyboard.
> 
> It is not unheard of for single keys to "die."
> 
> Modern keyboards tend to be more robust than those
> of yore, but I've 
> still had them fail.

Actually, I just found the answer, right after reading
your reply now.

The problem was that "Escape" was set as my listening
key in Speech Preferences.

I just visited the Apple Service and Support Web site
( see http://www.apple.com/support/ ), did a search
for the topic "Escape key," and found a suspicious
entry called "Mac OS X: Keyboard Works, Except for One
Key" (Article ID: 25553) ( see
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25553
).

This is what the article stated:

----- article follows immediately after this line
-----
Mac OS X: Keyboard Works, Except for One Key

                When Apple Speakable Items is on, one
key on the keyboard may not work if it's set as the
Listening Key. This document applies to Mac OS X 10.1
or later.          

                Your keyboard works fine, except for
one key. If you change keyboards, the same thing
happens.  If you log in using a different account, the
same keyboard responds OK. 
 
 
 Solution
 
 The key that doesn't work may be set as the Speech
Listening Key. Follow these steps to chose a different
key:
 
1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences.
 2. Choose View > Speech.
 3. Click the Speech Recognition tab then the
Listening tab.
 4. Click the Change Key button.
 5. Press a different key to use, such as the Escape
key (esc).
 6. Click OK.
----- article follows immediately after this line
-----

I changed the listening key to the "Clear" key on the
Apple Wireless Keyboard's numeric keypad, and now the
Escape key works fine by itself in Emacs.  No longer
is it the case that "Shift" + "Escape" = "Escape."

-- DekuDekuplex