How to use KHotKeys (Input Actions in Breezy) PART 1

[Takis]

(found in Settings->Regional & Accessibility)

KHotKeys ranks very highly on my list of why KDE is great. It's a really powerful tool that brings together a lot of good features.

Notes

• This does not cover how to map keyboard sequences into something that X recognises (for example, how to map a multimedia browser button to XF86WWW). You need to use xmodmap to do this, have a look at this tutorial.
• For some reason, Input Actions crashes frequently without error messages in Breezy, whereas it was quite stable in Hoary. Ah well.
• The latest version of KHotKeys even allows you to speak commands to your computer (how cool is this program???). I haven't really messed with this so can't comment on it.

Part 1: How to use keys to start programs
This example maps the XF86WWW key to start Firefox.

1. Open KHotKeys. Click 'New Action'. An action called "New Action" appears. Select it, and rename it to "Start Firefox".
2. Directly underneath is the Action Type dropdown box. I prefer Generic because it basically lets you do anything you want, and allows for easy customisation in the future, but it's a little bit more complex so for this example we'll use 'Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL'.
3. Click the Keyboard Shortcut tab and hit the button labelled 'None'. A dialog box appears that lets you select your shortcut. Hit the key sequence you'd like to use to open Firefox (e.g. the browser button on your keyboard, or CTRL+ALT+F, assuming you don't have KDE using it for some other function).
4. Click the Command/URL Settings tab and type either '/usr/bin/firefox' or just 'firefox'. Same difference. Hit OK or Apply and you're done!

In part 2 I'll show you how to use mouse gestures and why the 'Generic' action type is so useful.

[stimpack]

Excellent guide thanks, just yesterday I worked out binding a multimedia key to XF86WWW with xmodmap, now with this guide, I bound XF86WWW to firefox