Arch Linux

TheConfiguringNeverEnds

Member

Registered: 2021-08-06

Posts: 10

Strange key which I cannot identify

[The point of this question is at the 2nd paragraph. The 1st is context and potentially useful information for identifying the strange key.]

Hello everyone. First post here. There's this strange key on my keyboard which I don't know the name of. It looks like 3 parallel, horizontal lines within a square. Since I don't know what it's called, I can't google it. Back when I used windows, I tried this key out of curiosity and it did nothing, so I ignored it. That was about 3 years ago now. A month ago I landed on arch after some distro-hopping and I remembered that weird useless key, so I tried it in vim. In vim the key took me into normal mode then capitalized the character under my cursor. I thought that was just vim not supporting the key or something so I tried it in a browser. When pressing it in a text field - any text field - it would select the word before the cursor then simulate a right click, but only if the cursor was at the end of the line. If the cursor was anywhere else in the line it would only simulate a right click. At this point I was deeply confused and went back into vim to see if the key was also context-sensitive there. It was. At the beginning of a line it would enter normal mode then capitalize one word (I do mean a lowercase word in vim terminology; I tried using WORDs to see if it would capitalize those but it only capitalizes words). I genuinely don't know what to make of this.

If at this point you're thinking this question shouldn't be asked here I completely understand, but let me finally get to the point. I want to know the mod number of this key (like how MOD4 is the super key) so that I can remap escape to it for use in vim. I know a lot of people remap Caps Lock to esc but I need that key for groff_mom, which I use for typesetting. The MOM macros are all-caps and case-sensitive so it would be rather cumbersome to have to hold shift all the time. I can easily reach the strange key with my thumb so it seems a decent enough substitute.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,500

Website

Re: Strange key which I cannot identify

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … es_in_Xorg

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

Ammako

Member

Registered: 2021-07-16

Posts: 267

Re: Strange key which I cannot identify

Menu key. Pressing it brings up right-click menu.

If the key doesn't work like it should then you may have another issue elsewhere.

It's not a modifier key, but it may be possible to remap it so it can be used as a modifier key. Someone who's more knowledgeable about key remapping could tell you better.

Last edited by Ammako (2021-08-06 13:48:29)

TheConfiguringNeverEnds

Member

Registered: 2021-08-06

Posts: 10

Re: Strange key which I cannot identify

Trilby's answer was helpful, thanks. Thanks also to Ammako for being a bit more straightforward. I will look into why the menu key is doing more than it should.

Last edited by TheConfiguringNeverEnds (2021-08-06 15:40:06)

Ammako

Member

Registered: 2021-07-16

Posts: 267

Re: Strange key which I cannot identify

Related: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=165956