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Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 1:55 pm
by jphartmann
I installed LXDE on top of UBUNTU 16.04 LTS because compiz simply makes a hash of multiple screens and workspaces.

LXDE is great, but, like all other distributions, the window manager has a bunch of keyboard shortcuts that get in the way of my favourite editor, e.g., I have

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control-alt-f
mapped in the editor, but it never sees the keystroke because of these shortcuts; instead I get a panel titled "Manage History", which looks like an editor for my recent commands.

I understand that LXDE does not supply a window manager, so my question is, how do I find out which window manager is being used? And then, where has it squirreled away the shortcut definitions?

I started LXDE by selecting the window manager on the UBUNTU logon screen.

As far as I can tell

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.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml
contains no mapping of

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C-A-f
; so, presumably I'm not using openbox. Is that correct?

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preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse
offers no interface to set shortcuts.

TWM gets this right, but that is going to extremes and I like the LXDE panel and menus.

Re: Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 6:17 pm
by jphartmann
It was ClipIt that installed those shortcuts. Rather naughty.

Re: Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 3:38 pm
by jphartmann
PCmanfm hogs A-C-D.

Re: Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2017 10:04 am
by drooly
^^ clipit shortcuts are easily disabled from its preference menu. i usually just keep 1 to pop up the history. it is configurable of course.

^ you mean ctrl-alt-d? i have pcmanfm and that shortcut does nothing. what does it do for you?

btw, you ARE using openbox.

so is the problem solved?
shortcuts should be editable in every application, yet sometimes they aren't. if 2 apps used the same (global!*) shortcuts, and weren't editable, i agree that would be an unacceptable situation, but it has never happened to me so far.

(*) please be aware of the difference! global shortcuts are active whether the window in question has focus or not; this is the case for openbox and also clipit shortcuts.
usual editor shortcuts are only used when the editor window is focused, so not global.

Re: Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2017 12:56 pm
by jphartmann
I solved the problems by uninstalling the offending programs. As far as I can tell, they get started somehow (undoubtedly by a list of commands to initialise I came past on one of my travels); and then hog the key. As I am very much a command prompt man, the annoyance is limited to finding out what does the damage and then zap it.

Re: Howto find the window manager being used and disable keyboard shortcuts

Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2017 1:42 pm
by jphartmann
Forgot: The editor I use is KEDIT for Windows, which runs under wine. If I need a UNIX editor, vi fits the bill.