I have found that the <Enter> key on the numeric keypad does not act the same as the <Enter> key on the main keyboard. Confirming a file copy in Gnome Commander for example. Using xev I found the following
and using xmodmap -pke
So based on some research it seems I should be able to edit my ~/.Xmodmap to assign the same key (Return) to keycode 104 - the keypad <Enter> key.

Except - I have no .Xmodmap. Am I supposed to? Did it move in Ubuntu 9.10? Do I have to create it? or does Ubuntu 9.10 use a "better" method of handling key mappings?

TIA,

Ken

What's your problem? The keypad always gives KP_Enter instead of Return, but both eventually generate code 0A.

Hi DavidMcCann,

The problem is that the keypad <Enter> does not activate the default button in dialogs. For example if I select a file in one Panel of Gnome Commander and press F5 to copy it to the location in the other panel a copy confirmation dialog comes up. The OK button is highlighted and is the default action. The main keyboard <Enter> will actuate the OK button. The keypad <Enter> will not.

Ken

That's weird! It works fine with Fedora. What does xev return for the keys? Mind you, my xev is odd here: it identifies them as CR instead of LF.

You could try using xmodmap to reconfigure the key (see the man page).

DavidMcCann,

The xev output is shown in the original post. I am not an expert in evaluating the data but is seems that the two keys are different. I will look into xmodmap.

Thanks,

Ken

Many thanks DavidMcCann!!!

I delved into xmodmap and found a few things:

If Ubuntu has a .Xmodmap file it is well hidden - I had started down this road once before but could not find any such file ANYWHERE on the system.

So, as there is supposed to be one in $HOME/ and the format is supposed to match the output of xmodmap -pke I simply redirected the output of the command to create my own .Xmodmap.

I opened my new .Xmodmap file in gedit. Then I looked up the Enter key, keycode 36 and copied the data for that key "Return NoSymbol Return NoSymbol Return" and replaced the data for the keypad return key keycode 104 with the same string. I restarted the PC (guess I could have logged out and back in) anyhow the custom keymappings loaded. I confirmed them in xev and found that Gnome Commander now honors the keypad enter key

Now if only I could get the Gnome "file selector" dialog to respect my "single click performs the action" preference. However, that seems to be related to a bug (or philosophical disagreement) which dates back about 140 years

Regards,

Ken

If you mean in the Nautilus file browser, you can alter this with Edit Preferences - Behaviour. In general, you can have a "simulated secondary click", where a slow release counts as a double click: see System - Preferences - Hardware - Mouse - Accessibility.

Hello again DavidMcCann,

The Nautilus file browser I have under control. Single click does the deed. Same for Gnome Commander. It is the dialog following Open; File (common to most applications) which does not work. I may try the mouse options although I will have to think what that might do in other situations. Which reminds me of a story...

I was working for a fortune 250 company converting data from a number of in-house applications to an off the shelf work management/supply chain suite of programs. We had a programmer on the team (a little weird - his belief was that if aquarium antibiotics worked for fish they would work for any other animal - even his family and himself) - anyhow the Lovebug worm was making its way around and this dude received a copy of it from some source. He saved it to his PC and right clicked on it with the intention of opening it in Notepad to have a look at the code. Anyhow he managed to trigger it. His PC was known to be a little flaky and often would seemingly substitute a double click for a single click on occasion or a double click for two single clicks a long time apart. Some weeks later, after Mr. Aquarium Antibiotics was fired for threatening another staff member, the PC presented a note on screen from Intel stating that the processor had exceeded its allowed error count and should be replaced under warranty. We did that and it never confused a click vs. a double click again.

Ken

My answer to this issue was to create my xmodmap file in /etc/X11/ because I wanted all users to have the edited keys then edit /etc/X11/Xsession and add this line...

If you wanted different xmodmaps for each user, change the file location to ~/Xmodmap or whatever you want

That is a great idea oshunluvr. However, as the only users of this machine are me, myself and I... My home directory seemed to be the right place.

Ken

Then I suggest using ~/.xmodmap so the file is usually hidden from view.
The "-f" part in boxes checks to see if the file exists before loading so if you add another user, it won't try and load xmodmap