Changing X window focus on a key press

My colleague Isamu, who has Cerebral Palsy, was asking
me if I knew how to configure CDE so that he could use the keyboard
Function keys to select focus on different windows.

Unable to turn down such a challenge I took a look at
docs.sun.com and soon found a reference to
sdthotkey(1). Alas using this application I was unable to accomplish
what Isamu wanted. However the manual page had a reference to
dtwmrc(4) which provided sufficient infomration to fulfill the
requirements.

So after some fiddling I supplied the following to Isamu (the Alt and Mod4 stuff where things I added for myself many moons ago):

$ cat $HOME/.dt/sdthotkey.dtwmrc
#VERSION 1.0
# This file is generated by /usr/dt/bin/sdthotkey
# Oh no it wasn't....  It was edited by hand....
# See dtwmrc(4) for a list of valid functions.
#
Keys DtKeyBindings
{
# Circle windows stack
‹key›F1 root|icon|window f.circle_down
‹key›F2 root|icon|window f.circle_up
# Move to next window and give keyboard focus
# Specify for Window , icon or both (also transient).
‹key›F3 root|icon|window f.next_key window | icon
‹key›F4 root|icon|window f.prev_key window | icon
‹key›F5 root|icon|window f.next_key icon
‹key›F6 root|icon|window f.prev_key icon
# Text Editor
‹key›F7 root|icon|window f.exec "xemacs"
# Disable/Enable CDE key functions - Passes key to application.
‹key›F8 root|icon|window f.pass_keys
# Sun Volume keys
‹key›SunAudioLowerVolume root|icon|window f.action AudioLowerVolume
‹key›SunAudioMute root|icon|window f.action AudioMute
‹key›SunAudioRaiseVolume root|icon|window f.action AudioRaiseVolume
# Move workspaces
Alt‹Key›1 root|icon|window f.goto_workspace ws0
Alt‹Key›2 root|icon|window f.goto_workspace ws1
Alt‹Key›3 root|icon|window f.goto_workspace ws2
Alt‹Key›4 root|icon|window f.goto_workspace ws3
# Lock
Alt‹Key›L1 ifkey|root|icon|window f.action LockDisplay
# Manual pages
Alt‹key›Help root|icon|window f.action Dtmanpageview
# Audio Beep
Mod4 Alt‹KEY›Cancel icon|window|root f.exec "/usr/openwin/bin/xset b off"
Mod4 Alt‹KEY›Redo icon|window|root f.exec "/usr/openwin/bin/xset b on"
# Applications
Mod4 Alt‹KEY›G icon|window|root f.exec "/share/latest_SUNWspro/bin/gnuclient"
Mod4 Alt‹KEY›T icon|window|root f.action Xterm
Mod4 Alt‹KEY›X icon|window|root f.action Xterm
}

Isamu was very pleased and has adjusted the file to suit himself.

Personally I use fvwm myself but I’m sure
,moving forward, that Isamu would like to configure
gnome to work in a similar fashion… Any
takers for this challenge?

Stace

Happy New Year

For the new year I thought that I’d try and keep this blog a bit more up-to date. So far not so good then.

Kirsty and I have decided that we would like to update our on-suit bathroom at home and have thus spent a lot of time going to Bathroom stores, looking at Bathroom web sites and browsing catalogues. Looking at the prices certainly makes me think that technology isn’t so over priced after all.

Talking of technology, for Christmas I got a Cat Eye TL-LD1000 rear light which has 10 high powered LEDs. I must say it is rather good. Only when I got home tonight it was very dim! I must take a gander at the manual.

My father-in-law got me large box of assorted wine :-), thanks George. He also sent me a gift of two months free rental from LOVEFiLM. The idea being that you tell them what DVDs you’d like to watch and they send you a couple. When you have watched them, send them back and they will send some more from your list. Today the first two DVDs arrived… I was a little disappointed to see that out of the 32 DVD’s I had listed they have not sent me anyone of them. And one that they did send me I have seen. So tonight I spent an hour or so ‘rating’ films that I have seen. Trouble is I have seen thousands and have rated but a few… I have prioritized my list and so we will see if lOVEFiLM can Deliver. If not I seem Amazon, Tesco and a host of others offer similar schemes.

At work I have mainly spent the last few days reading snoop files of DNS traces and improving snoop so that it can decode EDNS records.