Hi!

I would like to be able to add my own shortcuts in Gnome (latest
version, running Debian testing). This is not what I can do now in the
"Keyboard Shortcuts" application, in that I can only add shortcuts to
the pre-defined things. I want to be able to set that for example
"Alt-Ctrl-U" starts Eterm with different arguments. How is this
possible ?

Hi flashz. Thanks for your question.

Gnome doesn't have a nice interface for adding shortcuts (unlike KDE;
with KDE you can create them in Control Centre -> Regional &
Accessibility ->Keyboard
Shortcuts). Gnome does, however, have the ability to create custom hot
keys, but to do so you need to directly edit the settings using
gconf-editor.

The procedure is described on
http://gnome-hacks.jodrell.net/hacks.html?id=14. To set up the command
you gave as an example, you'd need to do something like this:

1. Start gconf-editor. You can do this by choosing 'Run Application',
typing in 'gconf-editor', and pressing 'Run'.

2. Expand 'apps' -> 'Metacity' and select 'keybinding_commands'.

3. In the top right pane of the window, double-click on 'command_1'
and enter the command you want to run ('eterm --your --options', for
example).

4. From the left list, select 'global_keybindings'.

5. Double-click on 'run_command_1' in the top right pane. Type in the
key combination you want to use with 'special' keys enclosed in < >
brackets ('<Control><Alt>u', for example).

The key combination should then work.

You can define additional commands by editing command_2 and
run_command_2, command_3 and run_command_2, and so on.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask for a clarification.

--wildeeo

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Request for Answer Clarification by flashz-ga on 16 Aug 2005 02:13 PDT

If I would like to add more than the 12 commands already "defined"
(command_1 to command_12) would that be possible ?

/S

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Clarification of Answer by wildeeo-ga on 17 Aug 2005 11:33 PDT

Hi,

Yep, that's possible, you can apparently define up to 32 commands this
way. You would need to create an additional command (by right clicking
on the top right pane with 'keybinding_commands' selected and choosing
'New Key...') and giving it a name like 'command_13', and create an
additional keybinding, by creating a new key in 'global_keybindings'
with a corresponding name ('run_command_13', for example).

Perfect answer, also terrific followup on my RFC. Thanks!