Version: (using Devel) Installed from: Compiled sources It would be nice if KDE had a tool that allowed one to configure the keys of his keyboard to custom settings. There is a very popular Windows application that does this: http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/02/remap-keyboard/ This would be very handy in cases where the user is using an advanced keyboard that is not recognized by KDE.
Here is another similar application for Windows: http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ I urge the devs to look at this screenshot and see how useful this tool is for configuring the multimedia (and all other buttons) keyboards: http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/scrnshot.jpg
There's already a program called Keyboard Layout Editor http://simos.info/blog/archives/747 which allows to do what you're asking for.
Thank you, Andriy. That program is not a part of KDE System Settings, nor does it allow the user to map multimedia keys. As it is a GSoC project it is likely licensed under a FOSS licence, so it might make a good starting point for resolving this issue. Thanks.
Well the program you listed as examples are not part of windows control center either :) This kind of functionality (showing full keyboard layout and allowing to edit it) most probably does not belong to system settings. More than that if there's already a program which is very close to what's needed I don't think it makes sense to rewrite it under KDE.
> Well the program you listed as examples are not part of windows > control center either > I was not comparing KDE to Windows, rather, suggesting a feature that would be useful. But maybe I was not clear about what this feature is, as we see below. > This kind of functionality (showing full keyboard layout and allowing > to edit it) most probably does not belong to system settings. > Ah, that is not the key feature that is important! The key feature is to assign actions to the otherwise-unused multimedia keys on modern keyboards. This is an issue today in Linux in general, and the KDE preconfigured layouts do not satisfy most keyboards today in my experience. Thanks for bringing this up, I did not realize that I had to clarify.
Ok, let's try it from this angle. :) Currently I can set my keyboard model to Dell and then with global shortcuts module assign "Lunch Media" key to hide border for a window. I am not sure if having a picture of the keyboard adds much to this two steps. There a bit more on configuring shortcuts: http://geeksinaction.org/2010/01/12/kde-4-3-keyboard-shortcuts/
Looks like there's functionality to assign multimedia keys to actions currently present in KDE (via Global Keyboard Shortucts module as described in comment #6) and reassigning multimedia keys to other keys could be done via external Keyboard Layout Editor (including visual representation of the keyboard) so I am closing this one as "won't fix".