I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

Dieter@be · 2010-04-02 15:42:14

Guys, one thing that has been bothering me for a long time towards the quest of the "perfect setup"...
The feeling that I do not really "know" my system.. I have no overview of all keybinds of my entire system and just the thought of trying to create a big list sounds like a big time consumer.

As you know, there are different "layers" that intercept keybinds:
- kernel: sysrq combo's and probably more
- init: ctrl-alt-del, maybe more
- xorg: ctrl-alt-backspace, maybe more
- wm: probably the one thing my mind is at ease about as the wmii's and awesomes out there only respond to the keys I tell 'em to
- apps: many different apps, reacting to many different shortcuts. some apps don't even need to have focus in X to intercept your keybinds (eg yeahconsole)

I would love to have just a long list of all keycombo's that are intercepted on my system, and at which layer, and by which app. (and what it does, of course). It would make me much more productive. And, without such a thing, how can i confidently define my own keybinds in my WM?

Am I the only one feeling like this? Not having this information seems ridiculous to me, all hackers out there use the keyboard pretty much constantly.

Wouldn't it be awesome if all software (including kernel) would ship a file (or generate it on demand, because it can differ depending on your config) in a standardized format? Then you could create a "master index" (with different views, depending on which apps are started and which have focus)
This is the only way to restore my sanity, I think.

dlb · 2010-04-02 16:39:24

Well, there have been moments I felt the same. Especially because of those shortcuts used by init an xorg.
Does anyone out there has an overview about these?

Barrucadu · 2010-04-02 22:54:39

I've sometimes considered making a list of all my keybindings to scare others

I started once, but gave up as it was a very time-consuming task.

disturb · 2010-04-07 20:03:32

I've been dreaming of a modular keybindings parser, that could display a keyboard osd, in context, with little doc-strings integrated

ninian · 2010-04-07 21:22:24

Dieter@be wrote:

I would love to have just a long list of all keycombo's that are intercepted on my system, and at which layer, and by which app. (and what it does, of course). It would make me much more productive. And, without such a thing, how can i confidently define my own keybinds in my WM?

+1, indeed!

Profjim · 2010-04-08 00:07:22

I've spent a good chunk of time hacking on this in all sorts of different places. The layers I'm currently using are:

In /etc/rc.local, I have:

loadkeys -q /etc/keymaps/personal.map

where that file is one I created based on "man keymaps", "showkey -k" and "dumpkeys". The keybindings defined here are operative in Linux consoles. One of the keysyms bindable here is "Boot", that's by default bound to ctrl-alt-Delete I think (this format calls Delete "Remove", by the way).

My /etc/acpi/handler.sh takes care of handling the power button, lid close, and so on.

I compile my own version of xkeyboard-config, and modify some of the files to include my own X keybindings. Some of what I do there would also be doable using xmodmap, but not all of it. If xmodmap works for you, it's easier to just use that. I end up defining my own XKbOptions, so that in the same way you can say:

Option "XKbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps,compose:menu"

you can also say:

Option "XKbOptions" "my:extra_modifier_types,my:all_keys"

(EDIT: forgot to insert my ~/.awesome/rc.lua keybindings at this point.)

The next level is the terminal emulator. In the Linux console, there's nothing at this level. On the X side, I've got my set of custom keybindings for urxvt. I define these in ~/.config/app-defaults/URxvt. You could also define them in ~/.config/Xresources.

I try to arrange it so that my shell sessions see the same terminal input whether it's coming from keys I type in the Linux console->the shell, or it's coming from keys I type in X -> urxvt -> the shell.

You may want to throw a level of screen or tmux keybindings in there too.

Next there's your shell keybindings. I use bash/readline and the bindings are in ~/.inputrc. See "man readline."

For ncurses-based apps, it's useful to coordinate your terminfo definitions with what you've customized the keyboard to actually do. For instance, I've got this useless PrintScreen key on my laptop. I've bound it so that plain PrintScreen = an Undo key, and shift + PrintScreen = a Redo key. I made my own terminfo files (one an overlay on top of the linux terminfo definition for the console, the other an overlay on top of the rxvt-unicode termino definition), and have my ~/.bashrc set up to export the corresponding TERM. This makes some things easier; for some apps I can just say I want "Undo" to do such and such, instead of saying I want "escape-[#$R$$#@##@@!" to do that.

Now, finally, after all these layers, there are the app keybindings. I've got custom bindings for mutt, elinks, less, newsbeuter, vim, Firefox, and so on...

Yeah it's a lot of work. But I'm sure a lot less work than trying to get all the different dev groups to coordinate on a single standard or API.

Feel free to email me if you've got questions about any of these levels. Anyone who promises to document their efforts will get more help more quickly. :-)

Last edited by Profjim (2010-04-08 18:34:26)

spupy · 2010-04-08 18:29:55

I'm scared from my fluxbox keybindings file.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-02 15:42:14

I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#2 2010-04-02 16:39:24

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#3 2010-04-02 22:54:39

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#4 2010-04-07 20:03:32

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#5 2010-04-07 21:22:24

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#6 2010-04-08 00:07:22

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

#7 2010-04-08 18:29:55

Re: I have no list of my keybinds and it scares me

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