[openbox] How to bind the Super key (just the super key)?

seanh snhmnd at gmail.com
Tue Sep 3 04:24:01 EDT 2013



On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 06:59:00PM -0400, Dana Jansens wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 6:29 PM, seanh <snhmnd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > >Hey, in Ubuntu's Unity I just tap the Windows key to activate the dash.
> > > >I think Gnome 3 does something similar, too.
> > > >
> > > >Is it possible to bind just tapping the Windows key alone in openbox?
> > > >
> > > "Super_L" is what you've to write. I don't know about the press and
> > > hold thing, though.
> >
> > So close! Sadly it doesn't seem to recognize the difference between
> > tapping the Super key on its own and holding down the Super key and
> > pressing another key.
> >
> > For example I have W-Left/Right/Up/Down bound to window changing
> > actions. If I also bind Super_L to launch gnome-pie (or alternatively to
> > show the openbox root menu), then when I do W-Left for example it
> > launches gnome-pie as well as changing to the window to the left.
> >
> > So I'm back to W-Space to launch gnome-pie :(
> >
> 
> Ya there's nothing in openbox to deal with this use case, code would need
> to be written.

Hmm, ok. It would be great if there was a keyboard shortcut recogniser
program out there that could be used in combination with openbox, and
could distinguish between things like a tap, a double-tap, a long press,
or a press and hold and then while holding press another key, etc. That
would let you just use a single key as the special key for all your
keyboard shortcuts. Does anyone know of anything like this?

But sticking with what openbox seems to support out of the box, I really
do want just a single key, not a key combination, to launch my menu. I
find that's just much better for my RSI, especially with things like
window manager keyboard shortcuts that get used many times a day. And it
sounds like I'll need a second one for the client-list-combined-menu,
then a third special key to be used in combination with other keys to
make up all the other keyboard shortcuts.  So three special keys are
needed, I think:

Click special key 1 (alone): open root menu

Click special key 2 (alone): open client-list-combined menu

Hold special key 3 and click left, right, up or down arrow: move to window
left, right, up or down of the current window.

And so on (many more combinations involving special key 3)

It needs to work on both my laptop keyboard and my external keyboard
too, so finding the three special keys isn't easy.

Super_L is one obvious candidate for special key 1.

Maybe Ctrl or Alt as special key 3.

Still need a special key 2...

I already have Caps Lock remapped to be an extra Escape key for Vim, so
that's not available.

The actual Escape key and other keys along the top row (F1-F12, etc)
are too far away to be used so frequently.

Maybe the right-hand-side Shift key? Both of my keyboards have both left
and right shift keys and the way I type, I never use the right one.

This takes some thought!


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