Does khotkeys work on your KDE 4.1?

[boom2k1]

I don't know if it is my installation (sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop from Ubuntu 8.04), or if it is a general Kubuntu 8.04 problem, or if it is a KDE 4.1 problem, but none of the khotkeys work(from System Settings -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts)

All I want at this moment is to have a keyboard shortcut for print screen and Run Konsole.

[I can get the konsole shortcut working using xbindkey, if I really want.]

Does everybody else have similar experience?

Overall, I am quite happy with KDE 4.1, except for some little things like this I find annoying, but I am really glad I tried it.

Thanks!

[34.50]

Yep, they work for me, and I'm usin a laptop

[kuja]

No, I can't get khotkeys to work either - I'm using KDE4 RC1 myself ...

Note to 34.50: having your normal hotkeys working and having the program khotkeys working are two different matters entirely ... khotkeys is a mouse guesture/key binding/etc program.

[bda]

I have the same problem with kde 4.1, installed from the kubuntu launchpad apt sources. Hotkeys work fine in 3.5.

[flying_icarus]

Well, I got them to work somehow, the trick needed was the following:

1) Start menu editor, assign a shortcut to an application (i.e. for Firefox, I chose "Meta+F")

2) Open system settings applet, go into keyboard & mouse under computer administration, choose Keyboard shortcuts and in the fall-down menu instead of "kmix" or something chosen by default select "khotkeys"

An entry "K Menu - firefox.desktop" should now be present. Now, it can happen that it doesn't appear instantly, or at all untill you start menu editor again and save the configuration again (even if it wasn't altered), I'm not sure exactly when it appeared. ~/.kde4/share/config/khotkeysrc is instantly updated with the new commands and shortcuts, but it takes some trial & error to get the entries to appear in khotkeys configuration. It may also help to terminate any running khotkeys process and start it again (i.e. from konsole with "pkill -15 khotkeys; khotkeys &" without the quotes and definitely without any sudo prepended).

Essentially, you fiddle with alternatly starting menu editor and system settings untill it appears.

3) The new "K Menu - firefox.desktop" has preselected the custom shortcut which is "none", but the default shortcut is "Meta+F" as set in the menu editor in step 1). Now you need to select the default shortcut for this item and confirm to "reassign from menu editor". After this the shortcut should start working.

So, the basic functionality seems to be there, only burried under unfinished user inteface.

Hope this helps.

One last bit of info - after restarting KDE the hotkeys didn't work again, apparently the khotkeys process doesnt get saved with the session. Just put it in autostart or start it manually and the shortcuts should keep on working.

[rumburak]

I suffer the same problem that my custom shortcuts don't work.

There must be something wrong with the KHotKeys since a custom shortcut I defined in "main surface" (dunno the english translation since I use german localization - the german term is "Oberfläche zur Ausführung von Befehlen") for locking a session (WINDOWS+L) works out fine.

@flying_icarus
I tried your workflow but that does not help. Furthermore I have multiple entries for apps in my KHotKeys settings. See attached screenshot.
Additionally I can no longer start apps from the K-Menu. Starting by ALT+F2 works fine, but clicking the entry in the K-Menu has no effect (paths are correct/unchanged).

So in fact that are 2 problems, but they may depend on each other. Nevertheless the shortcuts didn't already work when I COULD start the apps in the K-Menu then.

[kuja]

I suffer the same problem that my custom shortcuts don't work.

There must be something wrong with the KHotKeys since a custom shortcut I defined in "main surface" (dunno the english translation since I use german localization - the german term is "Oberfläche zur Ausführung von Befehlen") for locking a session (WINDOWS+L) works out fine.

@flying_icarus
I tried your workflow but that does not help. Furthermore I have multiple entries for apps in my KHotKeys settings. See attached screenshot.
Additionally I can no longer start apps from the K-Menu. Starting by ALT+F2 works fine, but clicking the entry in the K-Menu has no effect (paths are correct/unchanged).

So in fact that are 2 problems, but they may depend on each other. Nevertheless the shortcuts didn't already work when I COULD start the apps in the K-Menu then.

My K-menu hasn't been working either. I think I got a crash at some point or another saying something about a corrupt k-menu list or something ... I wonder if that's related.

[kuja]

There were updates released earlier today that fix the kmenu not launching apps problem.

[flying_icarus]

I suffer the same problem that my custom shortcuts don't work.

There must be something wrong with the KHotKeys since a custom shortcut I defined in "main surface" (dunno the english translation since I use german localization - the german term is "Oberfläche zur Ausführung von Befehlen") for locking a session (WINDOWS+L) works out fine.

@flying_icarus
I tried your workflow but that does not help. Furthermore I have multiple entries for apps in my KHotKeys settings. See attached screenshot.
Additionally I can no longer start apps from the K-Menu. Starting by ALT+F2 works fine, but clicking the entry in the K-Menu has no effect (paths are correct/unchanged).

Ok, I will for now assume that the kmenu started working again, and concentrate ond khotkeys.

I have also noticed the duplicate entries, and found their source:

~/.kde4/share/config/kglobalshortcutsrc

They look something like this:

{6dad625b-0000-4000-be05-ed3e3cf362c3}=Meta+F,Meta+F,K Menu - firefox.desktop

If you delete such lines from kglobalshortcutsrc file and logout & login, they should be gone from the configuration gui. But apparently their appearance in there does not guarantee that the shortcut will work, the same key must be present in the

~/.kde4/share/config/khotkeysrc

as well, which in my case got created like this:

[Data_4_3]
Comment=
Enabled=true
Name=K Menu - firefox.desktop
Type=MENUENTRY_SHORTCUT_ACTION_DATA

[Data_4_3Actions]
ActionsCount=1

[Data_4_3Actions0]
CommandURL=firefox.desktop
Type=MENUENTRY

[Data_4_3Conditions]
Comment=
ConditionsCount=0

[Data_4_3Triggers]
Comment=Simple_action
TriggersCount=1

[Data_4_3Triggers0]
Key=Meta+F
Type=SHORTCUT
Uuid={6dad625b-0000-4000-be05-ed3e3cf362c3}

The Uuid in this case is the same for both, and if khotkeysrc process is not running, or if the khotkeysrc config file doesn't have the correct entry the shortcut again will not work.

So, try the following:

I have attached my khotkeysrc and kglobalshortcutsrc, go into .kde4/share/config in your home folder, rename your original files to something (i.e. add .bak at the end) and put my config files in their stead. Since they're default-generated apart from firefox, thunderbird and konsole additions, they should work on your system as well.

Now log out and back in so the kglobalshortcutsrc gets re-read.

Then open konsole and issue

# ps aux |grep khotkeys

If you see 2 lines (one will be from the "grep khotkeys" command above), and one of them just has "khotkeys" at the end, then you got khotkeys running, but maybe we should kill & restart it just to make sure it re-reads the configuration:

# pkill -15 khotkeys; pkill -9 khotkeys

After this the first command should list only "grep khotkeys" - that is our searching for the khotkeys process
Lastly, still in the command prompt, run the khotkeys again:

# khotkeys &

Hopefully you should see something like this while khotkeys starts up:

[icarus@andelain config]$ khotkeys &
[1] 11918                           
[icarus@andelain config]$ khotkeys(11919) KHotKeys::ShortcutsHandler::ShortcutsHandler: Initializing shortcuts_handler                                                                              
khotkeys(11919) KHotKeys::ShortcutsHandler::addAction: Creating action for  "{f36ee83f-0000-4000-8102-831412ef66c6}"  -  "PrintScreen" : QKeySequence("Print")                                      
khotkeys(11919) KHotKeys::ShortcutsHandler::addAction: Finished creating action for  "{f36ee83f-0000-4000-8102-831412ef66c6}"  -  "PrintScreen" : QKeySequence("Print") QKeySequence("")            
khotkeys(11919) KHotKeys::ShortcutsHandler::addAction: Creating action for  "{338b434f-0000-4000-ab55-5675442f8f9a}"  -  "K Menu - thunderbird.desktop" : QKeySequence("Meta+T")                    
khotkeys(11919) KHotKeys::ShortcutsHandler::addAction: Finished creating action for  "{338b434f-0000-4000-ab55-5675442f8f9a}"  -  "K Menu - thunderbird.desktop" : QKeySequence("Meta+T") QKeySequence("") 
((...and so on...))

Now try one of the shortcuts (in my config those are win+f, win+t and win+a) and see if it works.

If it does (as I hope it will), now we just need to make khotkeys run every time you log in, since it's not remembered in the session.

Create a file named i.e. khotkeys.sh in ~/.kde4/Autostart with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
khotkeys &

and make it executable ("chmod +x ~/.kde4/Autostart/khotkeys.sh" in konsole or right click, properties, permissions, check "is executable"). This should make it start every time when you login.

Although this made it work for me in the end, it's definitely not as straightforward as it used to be. Hopefully it will improove in one of the 4.1.x releases so more people can begin using it.

[rumburak]

Thx. I'll try this.
Meanwhile I got pretty used to ALT+F2

# ps aux |grep khotkeys

# pkill -15 khotkeys; pkill -9 khotkeys

You can shorten this to

# pgrep khot

or

pkill -SIGKILL $(pgrep khot)