Re: use the "windows" key as the escape key

[Brian Kroth]

Erik Falor <address@hidden> 2009-12-29 11:47:
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 09:03:50AM -0600, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> > I have been asked this several times and I haven't been able to find
> > the answer myself.
> > 
> > Is it possible to use the "Windows" key (Super_L) (between Ctrl and
> > Alt) as the screen escape key?  If so, how do you set this in your
> > .screenrc?
> 
> I'll take a stab at this.
> 
> Assuming you're running Linux, there are two cases to consider:
> 

...

> 2. Running a virtual terminal from X (such as xterm or rxvt)
> 
> I think it is not possible in this case because the terminal never
> sees the keycode Super_L generates.  It is usually intercepted by your
> window manager before being passed to an application.  However, you
> might be able to hack your X keyboard map to re-map Super_L into
> something that would be passed onto your application by your window
> manager.  But, that may also cause Super_L to lose its super meaning
> for any other apps that may wish to use it.

Actually, using urxvt (and possibly xterm) you can have it interpret
various keys (and buttons) as arbitrary escape sequences or keys.  You
might be right that the desktop environment may get in the way.  I'm
personally using fluxbox because I like to have lots of control over my
key bindings, but something like gnome might gobble them up depending
upon how they are mapped (eg: .Xmodmap or other keyboard shortcuts).

Though not entirely related to the original question, here's a set of
info that I just recently cooked up that shows how to bind the mouse
buttons to escape sequences for the purposes of getting mouse scrolling
to work inside various console apps that may or may not support it
directly like less, vim, mutt, irssi, screen, any of these inside
screen, etc.

The principals for binding other keys should be basically the same.

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~bpkroth/src/terminal-mouse-scrolling/README
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~bpkroth/src/terminal-mouse-scrolling.tar.bz2

Cheers,
Brian

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