Re: Macros in Windowmaker

[Brian Mays <brian@debian.org>]

patch@dominoid.net (Patrick Cherry) wrote:

> I realise that this is a touch off topic, but the keyboard on my
> laptop (an acer travelmate 521te) has several extra functions
> (accessible by pushing the `Fn' button + F1 to F8), some of which
> generate keycodes under X.  Is there any way to assign macros to these
> keys under WindowMaker, or perhaps another (cooler?) WM.

Yes.  You just need to find out the keycodes for these keys and map them
to the higher level function keys (X gives you at least 35 function keys
to work with, along with many other special keysyms).

For example, I have modified my laptop to use the "windows" key and the
windows "menu" key to pop up the application menu (usually bound to F12)
and the window menu key (usually bound to F11).

First, I found their keycodes and added the following lines to .Xmodmap:

    keycode 0x73 = F13
    keycode 0x75 = Menu

So that the "menu" key is bound to the Menu keysym and the "Windows" key
is bound to F13.

Then, it is easy to bind these keys to functions under WindowMaker.  My
GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker file contains the following:

  RootMenuKey = Menu ;
  WindowListKey = F13 ;

> Also there are several launch keys that under windows load things like
> IE and Outlook... again, any way to harness these keys to generate
> keycodes without serious kernel hacking?

If they don't generate keycodes, then my method will not work.

- Brian