Fix org-mode agenda viewing of stuck projects with UK keyboard #

Question

So this is a bit specialised. I've used org-mode for a while now but never before the agenda command to list a "stuck project". The sequence built in to do this with org-agenda is C-c a #. This doesn't work out of the box for anyone with a UK keyboard because the # key is on Alt-3 and Alt is bound to Meta (I can't realistically change this) in Emacs. Actually I use Aquamacs but I don't think this is relevant.

I tried the method suggested in https://stackoverflow.com/a/4786456/1972730 namely

;; Allow hash to be entered   
(global-set-key (kbd "M-3") '(lambda () (interactive) (insert "#")))

and that does indeed allow me to enter # symbols in many contexts but when I enter the # symbol in the org-agenda context I get the error:

org-agenda-get-restriction-and-command: Wrong type argument: characterp, 134217779

So I could always type

M-x org-agenda-list-stuck-projects

but that's way too cumbersome. I suppose I could just find another key combination, but I want it to start with C-c aand I'm not so sure how to proceed with this. Suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use M-3 instead of # as part of a key definition. Use something like this in your .emacs:

;; fix agenda command with # for UK keyboard
(define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c a M-3") 'org-agenda-list-stuck-projects)

Answer 2

The solution I found was to change my input keyboard source to Australian as suggested by another SX user (sorry, I lost the reference). That also helps in other ways as my keyboards at work are laid out in the same way now.