Problem with middle mouse button in KDE

[Duncan]

Dennis <dennismail at gmx.net> posted 200907311532.23216.dennismail at gmx.net,
excerpted below, on  Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:32:23 +0200:

> I have a problem with the following KDE (Kubuntu 9.04 32bit):
> 
> Qt: 4.5.0
> KDE: 4.2.2 (KDE 4.2.2)
> KDE Daemon: $Id: kded.cpp 944896 2009-03-26 13:00:10Z dfaure $
> 
> It concerns the middle mouse button: It does not seem to be recognized
> correctly. What I try is to make my desktop cube work with
> <STRG>+<ALT>+<MiddleMouse>, but this does not work. (And btw,
> <LeftMouse> instead of the middle button is not recognzed,too) When I
> try to set this shortcut in the system settings, it recognized STRG and
> ALT keys, but not the middle mouse button at all - when I press it, the
> other 2 keys are deleted in the key recovery and I have to start all
> over.

All that information (thanks) but you failed to explain what the STRG key 
is!  Never-the-less, google to the rescue, and it seems safe to say, 
that's German for the CTRL aka control key. =:^)

To answer your question, I don't believe it's possible to configure mouse 
combinations that way.  KDE's "hotkey" mapping seems not so powerful in 
that regard.

FWIW, I have my own, similar frustrations.

kde3's khotkeys accepted multiple keys.  This was very useful on 
"Internet" and "Multimedia" keyboards, with lots of extra keys.  I have 
one, and had mapped a whole bunch of app-launchers to a two-stroke combo 
of one of those extra keys (XF86HomePage, now detected as simple 
HomePage), plus a second key, usually a letter.  For instance, to start 
the web browser (konqueror), I used HomePage,w, for a text editor 
(kwrite) I used HomePage,e, for starting the file browser (konqueror 
then, dolphin now) HomePage,f, etc.  Of course it could also take 
modifiers, at least on the first key, so Ctrl-Shift-HomePage,End (so I 
was sure not to hit it by accident) was mapped to launching the hibernate 
script.

kde4's khotkeys, and for that matter, any of the globally mapped keys, 
are no longer multi-key.  They say there's no way to support it now in 
the relevant bug (161009), tho no details are given.  Maybe it's a qt4 
deficiency?  Anyway, that WAS my primary way of launching frequently used 
apps, and now I don't have it.  Temporarily at least, I've remapped using 
the Meta (aka Linux aka Win) key as a modifier, making it Meta-w, Meta-e, 
Meta-f, etc, but holding down the modifier key to hit the next isn't 
quite as easy, and I had other functions (Window functions, maximize, 
etc, for the Win key) mapped to it that I can't map there any more.

But that's just temporary.  I expect I'll eventually switch to something 
else, perhaps xbindkeys, since kde no longer provides a suitable hotkey 
solution. =:^(  xbindkeys can definitely handle all sorts of complex 
setups, including combined keyboard/mouse actions, timed sequence 
actions, etc, according to its manpage (which I googled for after seeing 
xbindkeys mentioned, I don't have it installed yet, but did check and 
it's in the Gentoo tree so I can do so), but the configuration/scripting 
language may be a bit too complex for some.  I've not yet installed it to 
see if it's workable for me.

You might wish to check it out as well.  As I said, the manpage 
specifically mentions combined mouse-keyboard actions, so it should be 
able to do what you want.  The question would be the same one I've not 
resolved for me, whether the config is too complex to be worth the 
trouble of learning.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.