No. While pressing the numbers nothing happens. When the F12 key is released the viewport changes.

Well, I'm afraid that the method I described with compiz is not for you then. These compiz plugins manage viewports in a grid/numeric fashion, which is not what you need. My apologies for misunderstanding your requirements.

Good luck.

The way I would want this to happen is that there is the key chord AND the single key, one of 60 or so, which when pressed causes the switch to happen instantly, and go to that single key's viewport. The key chord, still in a held down state, will affect the next key pressed, which will instantly switch viewport again. That's how it works on the text mode virtual consoles. Hopefully the state of the held keys is not inappropriately erased.

Well, that seems to be how compiz does it w/o any plugins *I* added ... maybe Ubuntu added them. But I note that when I press and hold the key chord Ctrl+Alt with compiz, the grid does not come up until I press and arrow key. But is stays up as long as I continue to hold the key chord, then I can press another arrow key. The grid drops away only when I release Ctrl+Alt. See the logic in how holding the key chord PREFIX keeps the other keys being considered part of the whole key chord.

Yes, I understand the logic. This Ctrl+Alt+Arrow movement is provided by the Desktop Wall plugin, along with mouse/keyboard/screen position combinations to switch viewports. But switching directly to an arbitrary viewport is not possible with this plugin, the switching is done only to adjacent viewports.

The other plugin, Viewport Switcher, provides the means to change directly to an specific viewport with the keybinding+number combination, but the plugin handles the viewports in a grid/numeric way, which is not what you require.

As far as I know, there is no way to accomplish what you want to do with compiz or XFCE.

Perhaps someone with experience in KDE can comment if this kind of viewport switching is possible there?

I think it is with Xfce ... if someone can tell me what code is used for the Windows key in the shortcuts menu.

Inspecting ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml, it seems that's how it works. For example <property name="&lt;Control&gt;F7" type="string" value="workspace_7_key"/>

How would the Super (aka Windows) key be referenced? Well, I use Super+E to start Thunar showing my home directory. The shortcut was created in the GUI. The XML (in xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml) is <property name="&lt;Super&gt;e" type="string" value="thunar /home/c"/>

So, if you want Alt+Super+g to switch to workspace 35, it might be worth shutting down Xfce and adding a line to xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml, something like <property name="&lt;Alt&gt;&lt;Super&gt;g" type="string" value="workspace_35_key"/>. Might be worth testing on workspace 2 first.

Which shortcuts menu? If you mean Settings -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts then no code is entered. The task is achieved by pressing the desired keys. As per my last post, the coded result appears in xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml where the Super (aka Windows) key is coded as "Super".

I was told that name yesterday on IRC ... first I've ever heard it called "Super". Was that made up to avoid a reference to a Microsoft product?

I've added new ones, and so far they do nothing while the old ones still work.

I was in Settings -> Settings Editor -> xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts -> xfwm4 -> custom. I eventually figured out that you need to keep the "/xfwm4/custom/" so the string to be in there would look like "/xfwm4/custom/<Alt><Super>g" or such. But stuff is not working. Maybe there is a limit? Maybe "<Super>" is blocked somewhere and has to be enabled? Maybe it can't handle above 12 in the shortcuts?

Is there anyone around that can read the Xfce source code?