I know this isn’t exactly the right place to ask this, but I couldn’t find anywhere more appropriate, so here goes. Please feel free to point me in the right direction if you know a better forum for this.
The Manjaro KDE installation of xkeyboard-config
does some really weird stuff with the F13-F24 keys, which I don’t think makes much sense at all. For example, in my /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/inet
, I have lines like this:
key <FK13> { [ XF86Tools ] };
key <FK14> { [ XF86Launch5 ] };
key <FK15> { [ XF86Launch6 ] };
key <FK16> { [ XF86Launch7 ] };
key <FK17> { [ XF86Launch8 ] };
key <FK18> { [ XF86Launch9 ] };
So, for example, pressing F13 brings up the KDE settings application because it’s bound to XF86Tools for some reason. Now I’m sure this all made sense to somebody at some point, but it strikes me as defaults that are at best surprising and at worst downright bizarre. Why not just have F13-F24 be F13-F24?
I can configure these to be sensible for any given user by creating ~/.Xmodmap
with lines
keycode 191 = F13 F13 F13
keycode 192 = F14 F14 F14
keycode 193 = F15 F15 F15
keycode 194 = F16 F16 F16
keycode 195 = F17 F17 F17
keycode 196 = F18 F18 F18
keycode 197 = F19 F19 F19
keycode 198 = F20 F20 F20
keycode 199 = F21 F21 F21
keycode 200 = F22 F22 F22
keycode 202 = F23 F23 F23
keycode 203 = F24 F24 F24
But wouldn’t it be better if Manjaro’s default config just didn’t mess with these keys unnecessarily? It’s a really user-unfriendly thing to have to work out how to fix stuff like this. I get that the current default is probably inherited from upstream, but I’m starting here because I can’t imagine getting very far on the X11 mailing lists.
Context:
For those who don’t know, the F13-F24 keys are really useful for setting custom shortcuts, precisely because they don’t physically exist on most keyboards, but they’re still valid keys that programs will accept as shortcuts. For example, My mouse has a bunch of extra buttons and the manufacturer’s windows software allows me to configure the firmware to send F13-F24 keys for each of these buttons, which means I can configure these as for places where keyboard shortcuts are accepted, but mouse button shortcuts aren’t (often in games, for example). People often use F13-F24 with custom keyboard firmwares for similar reasons.