System Settings/Shortcuts and Gestures

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Edit system wide keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures

Information

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Custom Shortcuts

Here you edit settings for input actions, including mouse gestures.

Standard Keyboard Shortcuts

Here you can configure the keyboard shortcuts for a number of actions common to many applications. This includes actions such as Open, Save, Close, Cut, Copy, Paste, Find, and many more.

Global Keyboard Shortcuts

Global keyboard shortcuts are used to interface with applications that do not display an interface. Settings for such shortcuts are edited here.

Mouse Gestures

Note

This section was written for KDE SC version 4.4.4. In KDE SC version 4.5 and later, the layout and organization of the system settings modules has changed somewhat. However, apart from a little moving around of some dialog elements this section should still be valid

The place where you start is System Settings -> Input Actions (in KDE SC 4.5 it is System Settings -> Shortcuts and Gestures -> Custom Shortcuts)

Enabling mouse gestures

In the bottom left corner of the window there is a Settings button. Make sure that the Gestures checkbox is checked. Set the timout as you see fit. The mouse button might be different for you, I chose 3 for using the right mouse button. If you want input actions to be enabled automatically, check the "Start the input Actions daemon on login" above.

Also to have any gestures working you need to have the individual gestures themself enabled.

Creating the Mouse gestures actions group

Right click on the left pane (in an empty area under the list of action groups) and choose New Group, rename that group to "Mouse Gestures" and check the checkbox attached to its name.

Creating a new mouse gesture

From now on I will assume that the new group is called "Mouse Gestures". Right click on Mouse Gestures and choose New -> Mouse Gesture Action (here there are three options but I didn't manage to work with "Send Keyboard Input") using "Command/URL" or "D-Bus Command" you will need to create a gesture and bind an action to it.

To create the gesture

Click on your New Action and select the Trigger tab. in the bottom of the screen there is an Edit button (click it). In the box that just opened draw your gesture using the left mouse button.

To bind an action

if you chose Command/URL simply enter that command/url under the Action tab at the Command/URL field.

Examples using Command/URL

Close window

This command will let you close the next window you mouse click on.

Note

wmctrl may not support your Window Manager.

Command/URL: wmctrl -c :SELECT:

to close the active window

Command/URL: wmctrl -c :ACTIVE:

Translate clipboard content

This command will display a translation of the current clipboard content.

Required for this are:
- xclip
- libtranslate

Command/URL: kdialog --title "Translation" --msgbox "`xclip -o | translate -f en -t he -`"

Replace 'en' and 'he' with the desired source and destination language, if you are not sure, a full list of language codes is available from the ISO 639-2 list.

Examples using D-Bus

If you chose D-Bus, here are few examples.

Finding out what to fill where, is done with the help of the "Launch D-Bus Browser", using that browser you can find what method you wish to call in what application object. Using D-Bus we need to fill some fields, the field name will be regular and the content italic.

Runner

This will display the Runner dialog.

Remote Application: org.kde.krunner

Remote Object: /App

Function: org.kde.krunner.App.display

Audacious next/previous/pause/play/stop/repeat track

Remote Application: org.mpris.audacious

Remote Object: /Player

Function: org.freedesktop.MediaPlayer.Next (replace Next with Prev/Pause/Stop/Play/Repeat)

Audacious PlayPause track

If not playing will play, if playing will pause.

Remote Application: org.mpris.audacious

Remote Object: /org/atheme/audacious

Function: org.atheme.audacious.PlayPause

Klipper manually invoke action menu

display the actions pop-up. (I am using that to search and translate words)

Remote Application: org.kde.klipper

Remote Object: /klipper

Function: org.kde.klipper.klipper.showKlipperManuallyInvokeActionMenu