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

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Erik Falor <address@hidden> wrote:
> 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:
>
> 1. Using one of your Virtual Consoles (Ctrl-Alt-Fn)
> In the Linux virtual console, I think you stand a better chance.  As
> root, you can run showkey, which will show you the keycode which
> corresponds to your windows keys.  On my laptop, Super_L is 125 and
> Super_R is 126.
>
> Then you can run dumpkeys to see what actions are taken when these
> keys are pressed:
>
> # dumpkeys | grep -E "keycode *125|126"
> keycode  125 =
> keycode  126 =
>
> This means that the keymap the kernel loads doesn't emit anything when
> these keys are pressed.
>
> You can use the loadkeys program to map the keycodes to another key,
> or to map them to emit a string of your choosing.
>
> The code looks like this:
> # loadkeys - <<EOF
>> keycode 125 = F60 F61 F62 F63 F64 F65
>> string F60 = "F60"
>> string F61 = "F61"
>> string F62 = "F62"
>> string F63 = "F63"
>> string F64 = "F64"
>> string F65 = "F65"
> EOF
>
> Now, when you hit Super_L in the virtual console, the string F60 is
> entered for you.  Shift+Super_L yields F61.  Ctrl+Super_L yields F64,
> which is the sequence you'll care about.  You should read `man loadkeys`.
>
> 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.
>
> Basically, it would mean that you edit one or more of the files
> setxkbmap uses to build up your keyboard map, an operation equivalent
> to what I described in case 1 using loadkeys.  The webpages at [0] and
> [1] will be of help for that task.
>
> Once you have the Super_L key acting more like its merely mortal
> bretheren, you'll still need to tell .screenrc how to recognize it.
>
> The way I do this is to (outside of screen!) fire up Vim, press i to
> enter insert mode, and press ctrl-V to instruct Vim to take the next key 
> sequence literally.  I then type ctrl-whatever to see
> how it looks to the terminal.  I do this in Vim instead of Bash,
> because I find that Vim echoes back more keys than will Bash.  For
> instance, I like to use Ctrl-space as my screen escape key.  Typing
> this literally into Vim results in address@hidden
>
> The appropriate entry in my .screenrc is, therefore,
> escape ^@@
>
> If I want to use ctrl-backslash, the .screenrc entry is
> escape ^\\
>
> I hope this at least points you in the right direction.
>
> [0] http://pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb/setup.html
> [1] http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/html/index.html

Very informative, thanks a lot!

:-Dustin