On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net wrote:
In general, it's worth noting that kde has several keyboard shortcut
configuring and consuming components. kwin, being a window manager,
should see all keyboard activity before it gets passed to anything else
(if kwin doesn't consume it), so should consume its own shortcuts. After
that, AFAIK the general global hotkeys component (which with kde3 was a
running khotkeys which I don't see with kde4, so I'm not sure which
running process actually handles it now) is next in the queue, followed
by passing anything remaining down to the individual apps, which will
grab their local hotkeys, then process whatever remains as they normally
would, dumping it into whatever widget has focus, usually.
So the fact that plasma's hotkeys still work even after kwin's hotkeys
quit working shouldn't be surprising, since they're processed by
different kde components. Since I don't tend to use plasma global hotkeys
much, I'm not sure whether the clock hotkey is global (will still trigger
if another app has the focus) or local (will only trigger if plasma has
focus) or not, but either way, it's almost certainly a different
component processing that trigger than kwin, which being the window
manager, gets first pick of the keystream before anything else even sees
it.
Meanwhile...
Kubuntu 12.10 doesn't tell me (as a gentooer, not a kubuntuer) what kde
version you're running, but the date-based-version strongly suggests that
it's older than the current 4.10.1 I'm now running, or even 4.10.0 (which
was out in 13.02 using the same date-scheme).
However, I did note a bit of weirdness in keyboard shortcuts in 4.10.x
(4.10.0 I think, having run the betas and rcs if it's not a current
problem they blur together a bit). Whether it's fixed in 4.10.1 I can't
say, as I was able to fix it locally by then. Maybe you're seeing
something similar, with an earlier version?
In my case, the issue was associated with a kwin (aka desktop) effect
which I had temporarily deactivated when I had a temporary issue with
OpenGL. When that was fixed and I tried to turn the effect back on, the
hotkeys were messed up, and trying to reassign them in the effect
properties from the middle tab of desktop effects didn't work.
What I found DID work was reassigning them via the global hotkeys applet,
kwin component. This can be found in kde settings (aka system settings,
except this is kde settings applying only to kde and to this user, NOT a
system setting applying globally to the entire system, all users, inside
and outside kde), common appearance and behavior, shortcuts and gestures,
global keyboard shortcuts. Select kwin as the kde component from the
dropdown.
Resetting the kwin hotkey I needed to reset there worked, while
attempting to do it thru desktop effects did NOT work, for me.
(FWIW, the effect in question here was the zoom effect, zooming in/out/
normal size, vs moving left/right/up/down while zoomed. I use the meta-
arrow keys for both, with control as well for zooming, without it for
moving while zoomed, and those hotkeys quit working. But all my other
hotkeys including all other kwin and kwin effect hotkeys seemed to work
fine. I don't know why it was just the zoom keys affected, but resetting
it in global keyboard shortcuts worked, while attempting to set it in the
zoom effect config dialog didn't work at all.)
If you're lucky, the same thing will work for you. Try resetting the
hotkey using global keyboard shortcuts instead of wherever else you might
have been trying to set it (you didn't say, except that it was in kde
settings), and hopefully it'll work.
One other thing to note. Normally, kded should pick up config changes
and apply them across kde immediately. However, one other thing I
noticed recently (with plasma in my case), was that a config change I
made didn't take effect immediately -- only after I restarted kde. I'm
not sure if kded had aborted and therefore was no longer running in
ordered to pass on the config changes, or if it was another problem, and
it only happened the once so I had no chance for further troubleshooting,
but if you're changing settings and they don't appear to take, do try
restarting kde (either logout and back in if you're running a *dm GUI
login, or quit kde/X and restart with startx or whatever, if starting it
from a CLI login). While that's normally not needed, sometimes kded
apparently gets stuck and a full kde restart is needed in ordered to
apply changes.
Thank you Duncan. In fact, I did try to set the settings again in the
inappropriately-named System Settings, and the computer has been reset
since then. The problem persists.
In any case, thank you for letting me know how the shortcuts are
consumed, that will definitely help me troubleshoot the issue. I'll
also check which daemons are running on my home system (where the
shortcuts do work) that
