altkey() down, up & halfway down

[Richmond]

If I have this sort of script in my stack:

on rawKeydown
    if altKey() = down then
      put "ALT down" into fld "AKD"
    end if
end rawKeydown

on Macintosh that ONLY WORKS if I am pressing an alphanumeric key while 
holding the altKey down,

it DOES NOT work if all I do is press the altKey.

Now, Andre Garzia's advice went like this:

"on rawKeydown, check for the altKey and change all the labels of the 
buttons for the actions they will
perform if that key is down, this way, as soon as someone presses ALT, 
the labels change and they know
what is happening."

and this is NOT possible on Macintosh, while it is on Linux and Windows.

Richmond.