Icewm and Winkey

Forum: Window Mangers
Topic: Icewm and Winkey
started by: rainall

Posted by rainall on Mar. 13 2007,18:35

Please help me to make Winkey working with IceWM. I downloaded icewm.uci 1.2.26 from myDSL repository and it works great. The only problem is Winkey does not work the way it is working under Windows environment. I am using old good Ctrl-Esc to open menu but it would be helpful if Winkey could do this.

I have tried to copy key settings from /opt/icewm/ to ~/.icewm/ and uncomment Winkey settings there. It does not work for me. Restart and reconfiguration of IceWM did not help too.

If it is not WM but keyboard problem then what file should be changed to enable Winkey?
So far my keyboard is set to 'us' and it is standard 102 (?) key US keyboard.

In everything except Window Manager it is default DSL 3.2 Frugal install.

Thanks.

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 13 2007,18:59

You will probably need to configure X to recognize the windows key before you can use it with any applications.

Open an x terminal and type "xev".
Make sure the xev window has focus, and then press your windows keys.
Look at the output of each key in the original terminal window. You should see "keycode <number>" listed there. This number can be used by the xmodmap command to set an X keysym to the keycode.

As an example, here is my setup in DSL:
My left and right Windows keys are keycode 133 and 134 respectively, as seen by xev.
I created an X keysym for each by putting the following in a file called .Xmodmap and then running xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap from the .xinitrc script:

Code Sample

clear mod3
clear mod4
keycode 133 = Super_L
keycode 134 = Super_R Multi_key
add mod3 = Super_L
add mod4 = Super_R

After that I can use the Mod3 and Mod4 modifiers for creating keybinds in X.

If xev does not list a keycode for your windows keys, we'll have to address that first, but I don't think that should be needed.

Now here's some info specific to IceWM:
This window manager apparently uses hard-coded names for the windows keys, so Mod3 and Mod4 are not recognized. You can, however, use Super and Hyper as modifiers, although I have had issues with Hyper...it's probably due to the terms I used in .Xmodmap, but so far I haven't done much to find out.

Bottom line is that it *is* possible to use the windows keys in Icewm in DSL, without using a custom keymap. So far, though, I have used only one windows key in this window manager.

Posted by rainall on Mar. 13 2007,20:07

Quote

My left and right Windows keys are keycode 133 and 134 respectively, as seen by xev.

My xev displayed exactly the same codes for both keys. So I put the following in the .Xmodmap file:

Code Sample

clear mod3
clear mod4
keycode 133 = Super_L
keycode 134 = Super_R Multi_key
add mod3 = Super_L
add mod4 = Super_R

and the following line in the .xinitrc

Code Sample

xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap

then restarted X.
It was enough to let left Winkey open IceWM menu.

BTW: Is there any way to assign Ctrl-Shift-Enter to put full path of the selected file in the Midnight Commander 4.6.1?
Since it is working in the console sessions and does not work in X I assume that similar approach may work here.

Thanks for this helpful tip.
PS: MC 4.6.1 is available in myDSL repository.

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 14 2007,21:30

One thing I've found interesting about IceWM is that even though the left Windows key opens the menu by itself, it can also be configured as a combo with another key to do other actions. If you press just the win key by itself, however, it will revert to opening a menu.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do with midnight commander. If you could explain it in a little more detail I might be able to offer some help.

Posted by jpeters on May 19 2007,05:45

Very cool, Mikshaw...just linked my winkey to Firefox (wonder what BG would think of that).