Idea #8543: Universal hotkey manager

Written by Primož Papič the 14 May 08 at 13:05. Category: Accessibility.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

Priority: High
Realisation: Easy to medium
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The idea is fairly simple. There are many hotkeys that you discover by trial and fail method. This should be made easy with manager where the user could see which are the hotkeys in use and could change them. Off course that means that some how these hotkeys should be recognised as such by the manager.
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One thing that I would really like to do is use SUPER (win key) to open my application menu. This would be also good to see what some key combination does not that some newbie presses ctrl-alt-F2 and starts to panic (just press ctrl-altF7), or not knowing how to get to system activities or any thing like that.
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That might be possible with scripting or something like that. But I want nice GUI where I could see all hotkeys in use and what they do.

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Comments

glotz wrote on the 14 May 08 at 14:03

You can now set your super key to open the menu. Via system > prefs > keyb shortcuts. The item is called desktop > show panel menu.

Setting custom hotkeys is a b*tch at the moment, agreed. You can do it using gconf-editor > apps > metacity. (you must separately define the key press and the command...) You can use the command line tool xev to identify key names. (the key name is in the parentheses with the keysym) This all is very clumsy and unintuitive.

Primož Papič wrote on the 14 May 08 at 14:10

That would really helped if I would use GNOME, but I use KDE.
maybe I should still try to find that... But still Thanks
And my idea was aimed at all Ubuntu flavours.

Primož Papič wrote on the 14 May 08 at 14:16

I found this function in KDE, but it also does not have all hotkeys; but just some (mainly for Konqueror)
You can find this under system configuration->advaced->input actions (you can add your actions but I haven't tried that)

Magnes wrote on the 15 May 08 at 06:51

"One thing that I would really like to do is use SUPER (win key) to open my application menu. " - I use xbindkeys for that.

luke2760 wrote on the 18 Jun 08 at 22:02

Yeah, I would up the difficulty for this to more like medium to hard. It would be really nice in theory, but in order to do it we need a standard hotkey api, and all system programs would be required to inform a central database of their (often mode-dependent) hotkeys.

Anything handled by the window manger or X though, those should be readily available. KDE handles this well, but I think Gnome has a ways to go.

As for me, I use Fluxbox, because all I have to do is edit the .fluxbox/keys file. It's the simplest thing I've seen. Just
Mod4 f : Exec firefox
(Win key + f starts firefox)
Which is scary for a newbie, but if you're desperate to have a proper hotkey manager, I'd recommend it. Both KDE and Gnome's settings are just buggy.

yookoala wrote on the 30 Aug 08 at 13:54

I think integrating the control to Gnome environment would be good enough for me. I really want to control all the Compiz hotkey + gnome default hotkeys + GnomeDo hotkeys + SCIM hotkeys in one single place!!!

(etc. I really want to use Super+D for the desktop hotkey)

In addition, it would be lovely if it can be one single setting file that could be import / export. I really don't want to tweak everything all over when I install a new ubuntu.

HaMF wrote on the 30 Aug 08 at 21:16

big +1 from me.
Especially the lack of an option in "System > Preferences > Shortcuts" to define a "execute command when xyz is pressed" is annoying!
The built-in shortcut manager of gnome is in fact very restrict(ed/ing). Usability - as it is a priority of gnome - does not necessarily restrict your freedom to configure something so it works just like _you_ want it to.

I often wonder why there's not sometimes a "Advanced" button to make gnome applications more flexible. I don't want to believe that the developers are just too lazy to add an extra dialog/tab/section.
(Maybe, I'll collect a few examples for gnome applications which have the potential to do everything you want but lack the proper checkbox for it and create a new idea for this topic. Your invited to just send me a few examples/suggestions for the task if you have the time and if you understood what I was just writing ;))

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