how am i make use of win key on the keyboard so that it will act the same as window that launch start menu when pressed. it would nice if it can launch kde start menu.

I thought there is a KDE control module for the keystrokes...
And to assign a keystoke to a certain program. (such as my e-mail key to kmail), you need to open the menu editor, and change the shortcut there.

Some keyboards have additional keys. you can use them, but X11 needs to have a name of those keycodes first. (like XF86Mail) I'm not sure how I've got that right , but I've been looking in the /etc/X11/* files for this with grep.

I thought you could just define it in .Xmodmap? You need to know the winkey numbers though. I think they're 115 and 116 for left and right handsides respectively, though it may be different for different keyboard layouts.

Don't ask me for anymore than that, I don't know anything ask google or the man pages.

~James~

'showkey -s' (console) and 'xev' (X11) could help you finding the key codes. I haven't worked with .Xmodmap yet, but I have a fealing it will overwrite the global /etc/X11/* settings


edit: it seams that I've found something. (but I can't test it until I'm sitting behind my own computer)

/etc/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.lst - list of keyboard models. find your model here!
/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/... - configuration of the keyboard symbols. (if you want to check your re-model)
/etc/X11/xkb/symbols.dir - index of the keyboard symbols.

my personal conclusion: edit /etc/X11/XF86Config (or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4), and change the "XkbModel" in your keyboard model to make the special keys work

in my case: "XkbModel" "compaqeak8" ..to reconize the compaq-easy-access keys. the special keys didn't work again after I'd upgraded my system