[SLE] Efficiency / How to do what I could do in Windows

[Rick Reumann]

I'm stumped by this... in Windows I had a neat little macro/hot key
program that sat in my systray. I could bind a hot key combo to a
program. like my mail client (The Bat) and with a simple ( windowskey +
M) my mail program would start up if it wasn't running OR it would be
brought to focus if it already was running. I do not see a way to do
this in Linux (using KDE but I'll use another if I need to). Now before
everyone shouts about editing the shortcut in the menu editor... yes
that works but only for half of the problem. The problem is if I use
that short cut again while the program is running, it does not bring the
active program to focus but tries to open a new instance of the the
program.

This application here on freshmeat seems to do exactly what I want but
it's pretty old (last updated there in '99) and I couldn't get it to
install http://freshmeat.net/projects/khotkeys/?topic_id=57%2C861.

As a deeper question goes, am I the only one that likes this kind of
functionality? I thought for sure when I switched to Linux it would be
one of it's main features. Linux users seem to be very efficient and
keyboard oriented (sometimes not even using GUI tools I like:) so I
would think users would enjoy hot-keying everything. 

As a case of efficiency I'm typing up a document in OpenOffice and I
realize I need to e-mail someone. What is the fastest way to get to your
e-mail program? Well, you are already probably typing in Open Office, so
it's nice to just hit some hot key combo to bring your mail program to
focus. Maybe there is a faster way other Linux users are doing it that
I'm not aware of. The next best thing I've found is hot keying the open
programs window to pop up which lets you cycle through the programs with
the arrows. But what if you forgot to open the application? Now you just
wasted your time looking to see if the application you wanted was in a
list. It seems so much faster to just use one hot-key combo to get to
the program you want. It worked great in Windows so please tell me there
is something I could do in Linux to achieve this. Why it's not already
at my fingertips by default is still puzzling.

Thanks so much,
-- 
Rick

-- 
Check the headers for your unsubscription address
For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help at suse.com
Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com
Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq at suse.com