[nmglug] Map multimedia keyboard keys with hotkeys

[Tim Emerick]

The following article is from Techrepublic ( www.techrepublic.com ).  Thought
someone might find it useful.  Since the site is a (free) membership site
requiring sign-up I thought I would just post the entire article here for
convenience.

Tim

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Map multimedia keyboard keys with hotkeys

April 18, 2005 


Takeaway: 
When it comes to working with multimedia keyboards, Linux user can turn to
the hotkeys program for help. Find out how to use hotkeys (
http://ypwong.org/hotkeys/ ) to configure your multimedia keyboard.  

Most multimedia keyboards come with a Windows driver disk to handle the
keyboard events on the extra keys, but Linux is often left out in the cold.
Fortunately, Linux users can now turn to the hotkeys program for help.

Hotkeys maps extra keyboard keys to user-definable functions. With a little
bit of work, multimedia keyboards will work fine under Linux. The first step
is to install hotkeys. Simply compile the source file or install it from your
chosen distribution, if available. Next, create a configuration file for your
keyboard, if one doesn't already exist.

To create a configuration file, copy an existing keyboard configuration file
and paste the name of the copied file in the /etc/hotkeys configuration file.
Push various buttons on the keyboard to see what events are triggered, and
then make sure the keycode mappings are correct.

Verify the mapping information by opening a terminal and launching xev. The
xev command listens to keyboard events and provides codes based on key
presses and mouse movements, plus it displays codes on the screen. One
element of the xev output is the keycode, which is part of a bigger block of
output beginning with "KeyPress event." The line of particular interest to
you will begin like this:

state 0x10 keycode 178
This keycode value (178) corresponds to the button pushed--in this case, the
"WWW" key.

By default, the configuration file uses XMMS to play music and Mozilla to
handle Web and e-mail. However, you can modify the file to launch other
programs.

Once you've configured hotkeys, you can begin using the multimedia keyboard.
Start hotkeys by launching the hotkeys program. It will background itself and
run as a service. For ease of use, consider adding it to a startup or login
script.



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. 
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail