The Alt key on the Mac

By Tecplot Support on · in Mac, Plot Making General, Streamtraces/Vectors, Tecplot

Problem: I want to place streamtraces on a slice using the Streamtrace tool with the Alt key as the manual describes. How can I do this on a Mac?

Solution: To get the ability to Alt-click such as for placing streamtraces on a slice:

  1. Bring an X11 application to the front by for example clicking on an xterm window.
  2. From the X11 menu select Preferences.
  3. In the X11 Preferences dialog click the Input tab.
  4. Deselect the toggle labeled Emulate three button mouse.
  5. Close the X11 Preferences dialog.This will cause X11 to treat the Command key (the Open Apple key) as a Unix Meta key and Tecplot for the MAC treats a Meta-click the same as an Alt-click.

You can now use the Command key (the Open Apple key) in place of the Alt key while running Tecplot.

Note: Although the Option key may have alt printed on it, this key’s state is not handled by X11 so it can not be used by Tecplot as the Alt key. If you are using XDarwin (the Mac OS X port of XFree86) or some other X server you will need to take similar steps to ensure that the Open Apple key is not used for multi-button mouse emulation.

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