LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Burrow <alburrow@cs.adelaide.edu.au>
  To  : lloy0076@rebel.net.au
  Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 13:25:50 +1030

Re: windows keyboard question

> 2) SOMEONE ELSE HAS DONE IT...LOOK HERE OR THIS IS THE MANUAL
> 
> I want to map the lovely Windows Keys to something useful (such as
> opening the main gnome panel, or maybe switching desktops). Anyone ever
> got this working or where I'd look to find out how to get it working?

I have done this for my own machine.  A few years ago I started
binding ALT-mouse events in fvwm so that I could treat the entire
window as if it was the titlebar by holding down the ALT key.  (I
never thought it would catch on so I didn't bother telling many people
about my idea ;-)  However, I was never very happy about stealing the
ALT key from the application.  So recently I worked out how to bind
the windows logo and menu keys to take over these functions.


The trick has two parts, one is a deepish hack into XFree86 and the
other is the obvious window manager configuration.


  1.	XFree86 and the win logo key.

	In the /etc/XF86Config file there is a "Keyboard" section
	about which the XF86Config(4/5) man page will tell you a
	little.  There is a "preferred method of specifying the
	keyboard configuration" which involves rules, model, layout,
	variant and options settings.  I decided to tackle this,
	ultimately by inspecting the configuration files.  Here is my
	"Keyboard" section


# **********************************************************************
# Keyboard section
#
#   - Keyboard input device, parameters and some default keyboard
#     mapping options.
# **********************************************************************

Section "Keyboard"

    Protocol	"Standard"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))

    Xleds	3

# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults).  For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
#    XkbModel    "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
#    XkbModel    "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
#    XkbLayout   "de"
# or:
#    XkbLayout   "de"
#    XkbVariant  "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
#    XkbOptions  "ctrl:swapcaps"
#
# See the files under "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb".

    XkbKeycodes	"xfree86"
    XkbTypes	"complete"
    XkbCompat	"complete"
    XkbSymbols	"us(pc104win)"
    XkbGeometry	"pc(pc104)"

EndSection


	the line of interest is the XkbSymbols entry.  It binds the win
	logo and menu keys in an accesible way through the "pc104win"
	designator.  For this I edited the
	/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us" to contain the following
	additional section 


// put Win keys on the "logo" keys
//
// The problem with "us(pc104)" is that it conflicts with the earlier
// practice for 101 keyboards.  Previously, <LALT> and <RALT> had played
// the joint role of Alt and Meta.  By once again dividing these roles
// between two pairs of keys, "us(pc104)" results in arbitrary
// assignment of the metafication between the "alt" and "logo" keys.  It
// also wastes the new keys.  The solution is to assign the "Hyper_L" and 
// "Hyper_R" keysyms to the "logo" keys, and assign these keysyms to
// "Mod4". 

xkb_symbols "pc104win" {
    include "us(generic101)"
    key <LALT> {	[	Alt_L,	Meta_L		]	};
    key <RALT> {	[	Alt_R,	Meta_R		]	};
    key <LWIN> {	[	Hyper_L			]	};
    key <RWIN> {	[	Hyper_R			]	};
    key <MENU> {	[	Menu			]	};

    // begin modifier mappings
    modifier_map Mod1   { Alt_L, Alt_R, Meta_L, Meta_R };
    modifier_map Mod4   { Hyper_L, Hyper_R };
};



  2.	Using the new keys in your window manager.

	This is the easy bit, but it will depend on your WM of choice.
	I personally prefer a very minimal fvwm2 without all those
	ridiculous menus et al, because I prefer to think of the desktop
	as ... well a desktop.  I launch applications from bash
	and use the window manager to organise the running/iconified
	windows on the screen.  Therefore, I bound the win logo
	metafication so that conceptually it makes windows "opaque"
	i.e., the mouse behaviour on the window the same as the mouse
	behaviour on the titlebar.

	For example, this is how to get the hyper key in fvwm and fvwm2
	(and probably a few other WMs based on fvwm):


# Window Bindings
# The mouse button with Modifier-4 (Win95 "logo" keys) gives the title
# bar behaviour.
#     Button	Context Modifi	Function
Mouse 1		W       4       Function Raise-or-Move-or-Iconify
Mouse 2		W       4       Move
Mouse 3		W       4       Lower



  3.	Did I mention readline.

	Maybe it was just me but I found the metafication in RedHat 6.0
	pretty crazy.  In X it was one thing, and on the console it was
	something else.  The above fix went someway towards solving this
	problem by making good 'ole "ALT" do all the real metafication
	work in bash and emacs, while "Win LOGO" picked up the role in
	window management.  Much of the problem was because of the way
	meta was being assigned by X.

	However, I thought also remembered changing some readline
	settings somewhere --- actually I think I just deleted the
	supplied ~/.inputrc.  It seems to be OK for me in RedHat 6.1 as
	there are no relevant changes against the "setup" and "etcskel"
	packages. 




Cheers,



Andrew



--
  + Department of Computer Science,                 "There is no fate that
         University of Adelaide,                      cannot be surmounted
         Adelaide SA 5005, Australia                             by scorn."
  + alburrow@cs.adelaide.edu.au                               Albert Camus

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