I found from somewhere that xbindkeys is suggested if you want extra fancy shortcuts.(which I do).
And I just got xbindkeys working.
I had 2 problems.
#1 xbindkeys not starting up when I login. a symbolic link in the ~/Desktop/Autostart did the trick. .xsession and .xinitrc and .xfce4/xinitrc did not. I blame the distro.
#2 the config utility was editing one file, and xbindkeys was running another. running xbindkeys -v from the terminal made it clear which file it was picking up the settings from and I got it fixed.
Now my desktop is as cryptic as emacs. :lol:
xbindkeys Web Site for more info.