Emacs 24.1 was just released, and I once again feel inclined to use the "real" Emacs (Cocoa GUI version, from http://emacsformacosx.com) instead of Aquamacs. The only thing keeping me in Aquamacs is this:
In AquamacsEmacs, Option (Alt) is mapped to Meta - however, because Option is used to input a lot of non-ASCII characters such as ü or £ on a variety of keyboards, the special character input methods take precedence by default. You can deselect “Option key produces only special characters” in the Options menu to use Option as Meta, or you set the variable mac-command-modifier to ‘meta - you will lose functionality, of course. If you use a non-English keybboard layout, the emulation modes might be just what you want. While they leave the Option key mapped to Meta, they will allow you to input many common characters ([,],{,},\, etc.) directly with the Option key, just as you would otherwise. You can find them in the Options → Option Key menu - or use, e.g., M-x emulate-mac-german-keyboard-mode.
This question speaks about the same issue, and one of the answers is "use Aquamacs".
So in Aquamacs, I can use Option key as Meta and everything is fine, I can type e.g. [ with option(alt)-8 and still use alt as meta when I add this into my .emacs:
(setq emulate-mac-finnish-keyboard-mode t)
But is there any way to use this feature in Emacs 24? Has anyone ever tried porting emulate-mac-keyboard-mode.el to standard Emacs?
And no, cmd as meta is not an option for me.