GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 310842
Prefixmap for shortcuts
Last modified: 2009-02-03 18:47:29 UTC
The windows-style shortcut system that is implemented currently is suboptimal when it comes to apps that use shortcuts intensively or happen to use the same shortcuts as metacity (TeXmacs comes to mind and probably - I don't use it - emacs). Ratpoison handles this intelligently by using a prefixmap like screen, that is, you _always_ press Ctl-t first and then the actual key (which can be a simple character - "Ctl-t c" could close a window). I propose to add the ability to use a configurable prefix-style scheme to metacity while retaining the possibility to use the old system.
In metacity you could as well change your "window menu" shortcut to Ctrl+T and disable all the other shortcuts. Once you're done you can "^T c" to close a window :) I see no gain from adding an explicit prefix option to Metacity. We can't show it in preferences without scaring the poo out of new users and it does not free any keys for other GNOME apps until we change the defaults to require the prefix (which is not going to happen).
I think Metacity shouldn't go the Emacs (or Vim, for that matter) direction.
I think we need to know more about the use case here. Is the solution (if one is needed at all) to implement some customisable prefix, or just to allow window manager shortcuts to be temporarily turned off while you’re using GNOME-unfriendly applications?
I think Patryk's solution is a good one, and in addition this could equally well be done by binding a script to the prefix key which did a global keyboard grab and then carried out whatever action was needed according to the next key pressed. So I'm marking this invalid, unless someone wants to explain why it really must be done in the WM.