On KDE 3.5, multi-key khotkeys are central to the way I work. Their
absence in KDE 4 has been one of the blockers preventing my migration,
and is one of the reasons kde4 remains "substantially broken" for my
usage.
My usage: My keyboard provides a number of extra keys, one of which I
use as a "custom launcher" key. FWIW, it happens to be "XF86HomePage".
So, XF86HomePage,c launches a console aka terminal window, XF86HomePage,w
launches the web browser (konqueror), XF86HomePage,e launches an editor
(kwrite), XF86HomePage,m launches the mailer (kmail), XF86HomePage,n
launches the news client (pan, knode sucked when I tried it last, years
ago, tho I may try it again with 4.x, btw, does klibido have a kde4
version and/or is one planned?), etc.
Since RandR functionality did away with Alt-Ctrl-NumPlus/NumMinus
zooming, I created xrandr scripts to handle that, and have them assigned
to most of the XF86HomePage,F1-F12 actions. Similarly, XF86HomePage,End
activates monitor suspend immediately (using an xset scriptlet), and
XF86HomePage,Home is the "stay-on", deactivate the monitor sleep timers,
function. To guard against its accidental activation, I have hibernate
set to Ctr-Shift-XF86HomePage,End. (It'd be XF86HomePage,Ctrl-Shift-End
if khotkeys 3.5 handled that, as earlier versions did IIRC, but it
doesn't, so I had to put the Ctrl-Shift on the initial key and eliminate
it from the popup menu that appears when just pushing XF86HomePage,
unfortunately. I also miss the display of the menu item that used to be
beside the shortcut, in older KDE 3 versions as well, but at least the
general multi-key functionality still works with 3.5.x, unlike with 4.2
and it appears 4.3, and however many more revisions before they actually
fix the regression and unbreak it.)
Other keys may have only one action. The next one, XF86Mail, pops up the
run dialog (and I've already assigned that to krunner in kde4). The one
after that, XF86Search, pops up the kmenu. (Obviously, the key name
matters little to me, it's the position I use, and the fact that it's an
extra key, of course.)
But XF86Standby is multi-key/multi-function loaded again, with the
various window actions (shade/minimize/maximize/window-menu/etc).
I'm getting more involved with KDE now and joined the kde and kde-linux
lists. In reading the archives, I noted that the khotkey multi-key issue
is a known bug. I just did a search on bugs.kde and came up with bug
#161009:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161009
It says multikey global shortcuts don't work because "we can't support
them - currently?."
OK, but... KDE 3.5 does it. But KDE 3.5 is apparently going
unsupported[1] and the regression is still there!
So what's the upgrade path for folks dependent on that functionality?
It's obviously not there now, but is it even penciled in on a roadmap
somewhere, obviously somewhere other than that bug, with its popular vote
confirmation? "Substantially broken" for my usage, indeed, and it
appears I'm not the only one.
Or must I now look for a third party solution, for something KDE was
perfectly capable of providing as a part of a whole desktop solution on
its own with 3.5?
.....
[1] KDE 3.5 unsuported: At least Gentoo's kde guide says "KDE 3 is no
longer maintained by upstream." But I'll be creating a separate thread
on that as I've some questions on that too, and will provide a link to
the quote there, so please save comments on that for the separate thread,
unless it's to simply say it's mistaken, with a current KDE URL to that
effect would be nice.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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