Version: 1.4.5 (using KDE KDE 3.5.6) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages The special multimedia keys of certain keyboards (play, pause, next track, etc.) do not work anymore, when running Amarok under Gnome 2.18. The keys are recognized in "Global Shortcuts" settings, but pressing them does not have any effect. Any normal shortcuts like Super+X work normally. Apparently there is a new Dbus interface for multimedia keys since Gnome 2.17/2.18. Here is a link to Ubuntu bugtracker which might provide more info: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/amarok/+bug/87299 Also a link to Gnome bugtracker for Banshee music player which had the same problem. There is a patch for Banshee there; maybe it's useful to fixing this in amarok too: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395433
You are asking us to implement a Gnome specific interface for the multimedia keys? No thanks, we're a kde app, and that is just going to pull more dependencies and configure checks. Perhaps this will be able to be sorted when we reach Amarok 2 where KDE will be using dbus. (or maybe i misunderstand the bug)
I am not a programmer, but I don't think you would need more dependencies. Just check if the new interface is available, if yes use it, if not, use the old. This is what the Banshee people did. Did you look at their patch? Maybe the change is trivial since the keys are basically recognized correctly and everything worked in Gnome 2.16 and earlier? But these are all guesses since I don't know anything about the program code of amarok. I think there are a lot Gnome amarok users and it would be too bad if they lost this functionality. Or would you say that fixing this is the responsibility of distributors?
As a workaround, use keytouch: http://keytouch.sourceforge.net/index.php (shamelessly stolen from the gnome bug thread)
I have written a script for Amarok that can be used to fix this issue. Get it here: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=60910 or alternatively it should be available for install via Amarok's built in script manager.
It is available in Amarok's script manager automatically :) Thanks for your help Chris!
And Seb is correct. Looking at the script we will be able to implement this when we have DBus in Amarok 2.0.
Closing correctly as Amarok 1.x is unmaintained since quite some time anyway.