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1

Wednesday, August 6th 2008, 5:42pm

Keyboard Shortcuts

Keybinding is a huge factor in my choice of a GUI. The extremely limited choice of keyboard shortcuts is why I almost never use Gnome, though it was my favorite just a few years ago.

Believe it or not, the biggest problem I have had with KDE4 hasn't really been getting over my irrational fear of PLASMA. It's been the keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts can be found in two places. There's very limited "Keyboard shortcuts" menu, and there's the more advanced "input" something or other menu (I don't have KDE to refer to at this moment), which combines custom keybinding with a bunch of other options I don't understand. This is pretty complicated for a GUI. It only seems to work half the time for me, but frankly, it's so complicated that I can't tell if it's not working or if I'm not doing it right.

For power users, the best keybinding file is one that can be edited directly. It's a big reason why fluxbox and other window managers have such a loyal following. But second best is a keybinding file that can be exported and imported from install to install, from user to user. I see that KDE has added that functionality, so I really feel like it's moving in the right direction. This whole input/keybinding thing looks to me like a work in progress, and I hope that you guys keep working on it.

A good keybinding function would be especially useful for KDE4, because, let's face it, Plasma can be pretty mouse-intensive. Sometimes, my wrist hurts.

Of course, for people who don't want to use the mouse all the time, the "run command" dialogue is a powerful tool, and you've really added some fine advancements to that particular application,

One thing you really need to add right away is a keyboard shortcut for opening Konsole. I tried doing that with the input dialogue, and it just didn't work. Again, I don't know if that's me or you. I'm not having good luck with that.

2

Wednesday, August 13th 2008, 10:46am

Keyboard shorcuts are as important for me and I find the configuration confusing too.

However I managed to make it work somehow - I got KDE4 4:4.0.98-1 from Debian unstable.
There are basically two places to set keyboard shortcuts /for Konsole/ -
1/ (left click App Launcher) System Settings -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts
2/ (right click App Launcher) Menu Editor -> System -> Konsole -> Advanced -> Current Shortcut Key

My current settings are following:
- in Menu Editor for Konsole (2/): Ctrl-Alt-F, saved
- in 1/ in settings for "KHotKeys" appeared "K Menu - kde4-konsole.desktop", set to Custom: None
I changed this to Default: Ctrl-Alt-F (this made it work!)
- in 1/ in settings for "KDE Menu Editor" there's also "Run Konsole", set to default: Ctrl-Alt-T, which is not working...

It seems this whole system needs to be finetuned yet, however I'm happy that another thing that I was used to from KDE3 is working for me. Now just the nvidia slowness... ;)

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "hnhn" (Aug 13th 2008, 12:40pm)


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