keyboard action under X

[Harry Putnam]

First let me say, that I've posted about this problem on both the
emacs.help:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.help/93417

and debian list:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user/462017

but so far, although there was helpful input, I haven't yet figured
out what is wrong here.

My setup:
Keyboard is 104 key english... A cheapo Logitech k120 new.
Older PC (intel P4)
Running Debian (testing)
LXDE desktop in xorg
Keyboard Newish 104 key cheapo Logiteck K120

Briefly put: On my keyboard I see, what is to me, unusual behavior
when I press what is labeled as ALT on the left or right of space bar,
followed by just about any other letter while in an xterm.  In my case
it is the real "Thomas Dickey" xterm, not one of the pretenders.

Example is Alt+x: `ø'
           Alt+=: `½'

so I'm getting what one might expect from an alt_gr key.

It means that all my custom ~/.inputrc function or insertions etc are
useless since I've used `ALT + somekey' for most... I might be able to
rewrite them I guess, but it also means that use of emacs -nw in an
xterm is a pain in the butt too.

So what can be causing this?

On debian (maybe other distos) we have /etc/default/keyboard, that is
supposed to control this kind of stuff.

I've tried a few different settings there:

with Alt not set to anything special like alt_gr or compse; And with
right Alt set to alt_gr.

I've seen absolutely no difference, no matter which I set.

I left it on the last one mentioned above so the settings currently in
/etc/default/keyboard look like:

,----
|  grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard
| 
|  XKBMODEL="pc104"
|  XKBLAYOUT="us"
|  XKBVARIANT=""
|  XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_alt,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
|  BACKSPACE="guess"
`----

I'm not sure what all might help to debug this but a few more pieces
of info are included below:

xev shows this gpt right and left alt respectively:

,----
| 
| Right ALT
| 
|   KeyPress event, serial 46, synthetic NO, window 0x2400001,
|     root 0x131, subw 0x2400002, time 18339999, (40,43), root:(76,472),
|     state 0x0, keycode 108 (keysym 0xffea, Alt_R), same_screen YES,
|     XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
|     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
|     XFilterEvent returns: False
| 
| Left ALT
| 
| KeyPress event, serial 46, synthetic NO, window 0x2400001,
|     root 0x131, subw 0x2400002, time 18340703, (40,43), root:(76,472),
|     state 0x0, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe9, Alt_L), same_screen YES,
|     XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
|     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
|     XFilterEvent returns: False
`----

 I have tried this in .Xresources:
,----
|  XTerm*metaSendsEscape:true
`----

Commands such as these:
 (wrapped for mail)

,----
|  setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -option compose:rctrl -option
|  terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
| 
|  setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option
|  compose:rctrl -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
`----

None of this appears to have any effect whatever.

How can I debug this?