Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
Schmitt posted on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:45:06 +0100 as excerpted: > This quotation of Stallman below of my message was attached with your > e-mail. > It reminds me of a sado-maso game ... > The user is sado and the machine is the master ... LOL! -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 02:18, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: > Tut, tut! As a reasonably regular poster you should know by now that > some hint as to kde/app version should be included, just in case the > behavior changed between versions. =:^) (By the same token of being a > regular poster, however, I know that you're on at least a semi-recent > kde4, tho it's unlike to be current upstream 4.7. But one really > shouldn't have to look at the from header and recall that name's posting > history to deduce that, as among other things, it reduces the > transparency of the list for newbies. Not that the version is likely to > matter here, but by the very token that you're posting a question about > it, you can't know that for sure or you'd not be posting. And perhaps > it /will/ turn out to be version dependent in some way, tho I doubt it, > but I don't know either at this point.) > Ah, yes, sorry. In fact this is KDE 4.7.2. I'm usually more careful about mentioning that. > But addressing the question... > > You indicate Ctrl-F, upper-case F. Since for obvious reasons (conflict > with whatever's running inside without it) konsole's default shortcuts > (almost) all have the shift modifier and indeed, Ctrl-Shift-F is the > default "Find" shortcut, in context, there's some doubt as to whether you > mean Ctrl-Shift-F or simply ctrl-f. > You bring up a good point. I do mean lower-case F, I use the upper-case letter when mentioning the shortcut because א) it is easier to discern an upper-case letter by itself, ב) that is what the Konsole shortcuts menu shows, and ג) that is what is written on the keyboard! In my opinion using upper-case F would be a triple whammy and deserving of the full Ctrl-Shift-F name! > I'm assuming ctrl-f, since presumably you'd have found the find shortcut > listed in konsole's menus and/or in the shortcut dialog and thus wouldn't > have posted to ask about it. With that assumption and further assuming > that you /have/ checked the shortcut dialog, just in case... > Correct assumption,... sorry for making you go through it though! > If ctrl-f isn't listed in konsole's shortcut dialog, then it's a > reasonably safe deduction that it must be being grabbed either above > konsole, before konsole sees it, or below, in whatever app is running in > konsole. I'll assume (yes, the assumptions ARE beginning to stack up at > this point, but...) that you've tested in enough in-konsole apps to know > that it's not that, which by exclusion leaves only the above-konsole/ > global grab possibility. > Yes, I did get this far. I checked in a new Konsole with nothing running in it. That much I did not see fit to share but maybe I should have. > That means... check global and custom shortcuts in kde settings, plus > anything else (media players, etc, often have global-grab shortcuts) that > you might have set a global shortcut in. > Right. Done that. Again, I should have been explicit. > I can make a few observations that might help narrow down the search. > > 1) Ctrl-f is a default kde "standard shortcut" (common to most kde apps > where it would apply, with exceptions like konsole for the above noted > conflict reasons, so it uses the shifted variant) for "Find...". As > noted, konsole is an exception, but what we're interested in here is that > since ctrl-f is a standard kde shortcut already, it's quite unlikely to > be a default for anything else kde related, especially as a global > shortcut. > > By exclusion, that means it's probably either a non-default setting, or a > non-kde app that is doing the grab. > That is what I was afraid of. However, being a new install I did not see what it could be. > 2) The fact that it's an xterm that opens ALSO strongly suggests that > whatever's doing the grab either isn't KDE related, or is a non-default > setting of something kde. Because if it was kde, it whould be a konsole > window opening by default, not xterm. > Right. > 3) As a followup on #2, what do you have set as your default terminal > emulator (kde settings, workspace appearance and behavior, default > applications, terminal emulator)? Presumably it's konsole or we'd not be > having this discussion, but that xterm's coming from somewhere, and this > is one more kde angle to check. > It is in fact Konsole. > 4) Similarly, consider file associations (kde settings, common appearance > and behavior, file associations). It's quite possible that whatever's > getting triggered is from a broken file association, possibly of a mis- > parsed longer command that would normally be launching something /in/ > xterm, but being broken... Again, this wouldn't be a kde default > association as that would be konsole instead of xterm, but consider libre > office / OOo associations, for instance, as well as (again) non-kde media > players, etc. > That is one that I did not think to check. Thanks. > 5) Does ctrl-f behave as expected in non-konsole X-based apps? In kwrite, > for inst
Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
2011/10/31 gene heskett : > Dotan: Methinks you give that person way too much credit when you call him > a genius. :( > If I were to sit down and think of the _one_ keyboard shortcut that would frustrate _everybody_, that would have to be it. Or maybe Ctrl-Z. Or maybe simply Space! -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 06:17, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: >> Wow, you're right! Who is the genius who thought to hijack Ctrl-F, >> which is "Find" in almost every application!?! > > So I was correct with the global-grab and non-kde theories! =:^) > > But I was somewhat thrown off by the assumption that someone would have > tested that keystroke in other apps, before posting a question about it > that blamed the problem on konsole. Testing in other apps would have been the obvious next step.I have no excuse for not even doing that. > Still, while specific window global- > level-grabs (perhaps specific-window X-level is a better description > here, since the grabs aren't really global, tho the would be if not > limited to a specific window) are indeed possible, since they're less > common, I was forced to assume that either that testing had NOT taken > place, or a rather less common grab mode was being used, and my proposed > tests reflected the fact that I wasn't sure of that assumption. So it > threw me off only slightly, and the test results would have confirmed the > fallacy of that assumption, bringing us right back on course toward a > trace-down. > > As for "hijacking" Ctrl-f, while modern x86 keyboards generally have a > meta/super/hyper/windows/linux key that due to its relatively recent > invention, doesn't show up on so many app-level key-bindings, so it's a > relatively safe key to use for global bindings, apps that don't assume it > exists (or is configured correctly), as xbindkeys apparently doesn't, > don't have the luxury of using that key for global bindings and thus > avoiding the standard, often already bound, control/alt/shift modifier > combos. > > As a result there's bound to be conflicts when such bindings are global- > grabbed, and the author was forced to either ship with few if any global- > grabs active by default, or to assume that a user advanced enough to go > looking for and installing a global-grab hotkey app, would also be > advanced enough to look over the default grabs and deactivate or modify > the ones that didn't suit his purposes. > > It seems both his assumption, that anyone advanced enough to go looking > for and install such an app would immediately check the config and modify > it to their own purposes, and mine, that anyone trying to trace strange > key behavior would test it in more than one app before posting, blaming > it on a single app, were both incorrect. > > Oh, well... > > At least the problem was traced and corrected, tho. That's the important > bit! =:^) > I'm not actually interested in placing blame, but rather finding the cause. Which has been found! Thanks, Zorael and Duncan! -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
Dotan Cohen posted on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:58:33 +0200 as excerpted: > On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 02:18, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: >> You indicate Ctrl-F, upper-case F. [T]here's some doubt as to whether >> you mean Ctrl-Shift-F or simply ctrl-f. >> >> I'm assuming ctrl-f >> > You bring up a good point. I do mean lower-case F, I use the upper-case > letter when mentioning the shortcut because א) it is easier to discern > an upper-case letter by itself, ב) that is what the Konsole shortcuts > menu shows, and ג) that is what is written on the keyboard! In my > opinion using upper-case F would be a triple whammy and deserving of the > full Ctrl-Shift-F name! I agree and would likely use Ctrl-F here too, but imagine the frustration of 5-10 levels of replies... before it's discovered that the two sides aren't even talking about the same shortcut! After a few years of list and (news)group based troubleshooting one tends to learn to play "spot the assumption" and enumerate them to the degree possible in the first couple levels of replies. Often the logic tree branches so heavily that the first reply or two are either very long (my tendency), artificially stubbed (I'll do this too, but generally only with what I judge to be the lower likelihood candidates), or short, but full of unproven assumptions that must all match up or it's simply multi- hundred-possibility scattershot. What's the most frustrating, tho, are posts that simply don't contain enough data to even begin to attack the problem. If it's going to be three levels in before the problem domain can even begin to be defined... Fortunately, those aren't so common, but they do appear. I'm thinking of one guy, a medical Doctor IIRC, who might have been quite skilled indeed in the medical domain, but who just did /not/ understand what I'd consider even quite basic computer domain material. What made it worse was that this guy, clearly out of his depth, was running Gentoo, and would come back time after time to the Gentoo lists with various questions. After about the fifth time of 20+ level deep discussions before the problem is resolved, 10+ level deep before it's even reasonably defined, one really begins to wonder how in the world they ended up on a power user distro like gentoo in the first place. But at the same time, I had to give the guy major points for persistence. I can only hope if I ever come down with some rare disease that I get a doctor so doggedly persistent! But, we generally did resolve whatever issue he was posting about... eventually. I've not seen anything from that guy in a few years tho. Perhaps he finally did decide that Ubuntu or the like was more appropriate for him than Gentoo, as it seemed to me surely must be the case. Meanwhile, I appreciate your Hebrew touch (and the fact that it "just works" here, too, no unknown-glyph squares, etc, that it even works is still a marvel to me). =:^) >> it's a reasonably safe deduction > Yes, I did get this far. I checked in a new Konsole with nothing running > in it. That much I did not see fit to share but maybe I should have. Just covering the bases. As I said, better in the first reply than getting five levels in, only to find out we're barking up the wrong tree... on a possibility that could have been eliminated several rounds earlier if we'd thought to cover it. >> 4) Similarly, consider file associations[.] It's quite possible that >> whatever's getting triggered is from a broken file association, >> possibly of a mis-parsed longer command that would normally be >> launching something /in/ xterm, but being broken... Again, this >> wouldn't be a kde default association as that would be konsole instead >> of xterm, but consider libre office / OOo associations, for instance, >> as well as (again) non-kde media players, etc. >> > That is one that I did not think to check. Thanks. Chalk that suggestion up to specific experience. That's why I was so specific with the LO/OOo example, as someone posted a problem not long ago that turned out to be exactly that, a broken LO/OOo association and the rather strange and unexpected behavior that resulted! As I don't have it installed that would have been pretty far down my list of possibilities and it was fortunate coincidence that connection was found. But once found, it definitely got put on my list of possibilities to check for, as this clearly demonstrates. =:^) >> 5) Does ctrl-f behave as expected in non-konsole X-based apps? In >> kwrite, for instance, and konqueror, ctrl-f should trigger a find, >> by default. >> >> > Actually, only after I posted did I even think to check of Ctrl-F's > behaviour in other apps! For me it is a given that Ctrl-F is Find,so > ingrained that I wouldn't even need to check it universally. I was naive > and young then! Ahh, those personal assumptions so deeply embedded that one is entirely blind to even their very existence! Spotting and challe
Re: [kde] Activity epiphany
On 10/13/2011 12:14 PM, Duncan wrote: Over the months and years since kde4 came out, I've read a lot about activities... and they always seemed "nice" in an abstract "wow, it's nice they can do that" kind of way, but not necessarily something I'd use a lot, personally, tho I couldn't really put my finger on why I wasn't as personally enamored with them as I might be. Today I figured it out. The trigger for my epiphany was reading yet another blurb about another article by Aaron Seigo on activities, as it happened, on his epiphany that lead to the ideas that have gradually evolved into activities as we know them in kde (and the new plasma-active). Here's the article: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/10/activities.html Quoting the first couple paragraphs (combined) as they appeared in my feed reader: Several years ago now I had a minor epiphany while doing field research in the offices of friends and work associates on how people use their computers. The ideas led to the concept of "Activities", which I originally called "Projects" (we changed the name because it was about more than just things we could call a "project").The idea was fairly grand: you communicate to the computer what you are currently doing and it adapts to that. You would be able to teach it what it means to be doing that thing: "I use these files, talk to these people, need this network connection, want these applications ..." The teaching would happen over time as you engage in your activity, whatever it might be. As I said, I finally got it, I think, and why altho it's a great feature for general computer newbies, it's not all that impressive in actual practice for me personally, because my personal assumptions are that of a power user comfortable at the command line and with scripting. Basically, all activities are, from a computer power-user perspective, is an automated method to batch a bunch of apps with their content together, launching and shutting them down as a unit, potentially at the same time changing configuration options that affect that activity -- disabling screensavers and automatic display sleep cycles when activating a movie activity, for instance, then activating them again when switching to some other activity. For a relative computer novice, or one more accustomed to taking an adversarial position regarding their computer because they can never seem to get it to work the way they want, as opposed to a computer power user who appreciates the way computers work, and uses that to their advantage, to the point they don't even realize half the stuff they're doing any more as it's so intuitive to them now... to that non-power-user, activities have the potential to open up a whole new world of automation for them, one they never appreciated as existing, before. But, for the already computer power user, the story is far different. To them, if they want a bunch of things to startup together, including a few config changes, the intuitive answer is to write a script. This script starts the apps and loads the appropriate data; if the intent is to watch a movie, it runs xset and etc to turn the display sleep timeout off if; if necessary, apps are started with a different title or profile or whatever, using command line options, so the appropriate kwin window rules will apply and place and size the window appropriately for that activity, including the appropriate virtual desktop, always-on-top, etc, settings; the script will either launch everything and quit, or wait around to reset things when the user's done and shuts down the key app; if necessary, the script will sleep a few seconds and then launch wmctrl to reposition the windows; etc. FWIW, it can be noted that /exactly/ this sort of thing is what I do, routinely. When kde4 killed khotkey multi-key support, I grumbled quite a bit, then had the insight that I could accomplish the same thing by having an initial key launch a customized menu app, that took the second key and issued the appropriate command; a few hours later, I had exactly that sort of solution scripted and running. As part of that solution, I start a konsole session with a special profile, so kwin can detect that it's not a normal konsole window, and treat it differently using window rules. I routinely setup window rules as needed to get windows to go where I want and behave as I want. At one point, the window name was changing after launch and I couldn't get window rules to put it where I wanted without using force, which then wouldn't let me move it if desired, so I searched for, installed, and setup a wrapper script that handled it all for me. I have scripts that launch a whole series of commands in a particular order, waiting when necessary, etc. All this is now second nature to me, just part of using the computer. So activities don't actually do much for me that I couldn't do already, only with more control, because I setup the script/config/whatever to do exactly what I wanted, when
Re: [kde] What is hijacking Konsole?
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 22:56, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: > I agree and would likely use Ctrl-F here too, but imagine the frustration > of 5-10 levels of replies... before it's discovered that the two sides > aren't even talking about the same shortcut! > > After a few years of list and (news)group based troubleshooting one tends > to learn to play "spot the assumption" and enumerate them to the degree > possible in the first couple levels of replies. Often the logic tree > branches so heavily that the first reply or two are either very long (my > tendency), artificially stubbed (I'll do this too, but generally only > with what I judge to be the lower likelihood candidates), or short, but > full of unproven assumptions that must all match up or it's simply multi- > hundred-possibility scattershot. > I see! Jaded, are we? :) > What's the most frustrating, tho, are posts that simply don't contain > enough data to even begin to attack the problem. If it's going to be > three levels in before the problem domain can even begin to be > defined... Fortunately, those aren't so common, but they do appear. I'm > thinking of one guy, a medical Doctor IIRC, who might have been quite > skilled indeed in the medical domain, but who just did /not/ understand > what I'd consider even quite basic computer domain material. What made > it worse was that this guy, clearly out of his depth, was running Gentoo, > and would come back time after time to the Gentoo lists with various > questions. After about the fifth time of 20+ level deep discussions > before the problem is resolved, 10+ level deep before it's even > reasonably defined, one really begins to wonder how in the world they > ended up on a power user distro like gentoo in the first place. But at > the same time, I had to give the guy major points for persistence. I can > only hope if I ever come down with some rare disease that I get a doctor > so doggedly persistent! But, we generally did resolve whatever issue he > was posting about... eventually. > Yes, I would actually venture to say that _most_ of the people that I have seen get in over their heads with Linux or some other software are the people who are _very_ successful at something else, usually with degrees. It is probably part of the attack-all-problems attitude that they are used to success. It is reasonable to assume that their first few months in their own field were no less difficult than the first few months with Linux. Then they succeed! > Meanwhile, I appreciate your Hebrew touch (and the fact that it "just > works" here, too, no unknown-glyph squares, etc, that it even works is > still a marvel to me). =:^) > Yeah, I don't know why I did that, just being silly! Unless you are using mutt I would actually expect it to Just Work (tm) nowadays. >> That is one that I did not think to check. Thanks. > > Chalk that suggestion up to specific experience. That's why I was so > specific with the LO/OOo example, as someone posted a problem not long > ago that turned out to be exactly that, a broken LO/OOo association and > the rather strange and unexpected behavior that resulted! As I don't > have it installed that would have been pretty far down my list of > possibilities and it was fortunate coincidence that connection was > found. But once found, it definitely got put on my list of possibilities > to check for, as this clearly demonstrates. =:^) > Are you referring to the Rekonq crasher? > Ahh, those personal assumptions so deeply embedded that one is entirely > blind to even their very existence! > > Spotting and challenging that specific sort of assumption blindness seems > to be a particular strength of newsgroups/mailinglists, a fact that > probably goes quite some way toward explaining why I'm so addicted to > 'em, given the rare chance they offer to look into that otherwise hidden > to me, but transparent to others, side of myself, and to watch the same > process of self-discovery as it happens to others as well. =:^) > Proud parent? Even if a bit jaded ?!? :) >> The truth is, I would have never found it if Zorael had not mentioned >> it. I had set up and used xbindkeys so long ago and stopped using it in >> my previous install. For some reason (I think that I know why, actually) >> it got reenabled in the new install but with this default config that >> had never popped up before. I would have never located that. > > That's another strength of newsgroups/mailinglists. Get a few people > together on a list/group, and it's astonishing just how many strange > corner-cases are covered between the lot of 'em! =:^) > Definitely, I have seen that a lot. > "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- > and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman Actually, that is true for the free programs too! Could _I_ ever replace Aaron Siego if he were to just disappear some day? -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com __
