microsoft natural keyboard 4000 F10/Spell

[Frank Cox]

On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:46:37 +0100
Marko Vojinovic wrote:

> On Monday 03 August 2009 22:06:01 you wrote:

> > "showkey -s" gives me no output at all when I press F10/Spell.
> 
> This is because it's USB. From man showkey:
> 
> "The raw scan codes are available only on AT and PS/2 keyboards"

That's demonstrably inaccurate.  The other keys on this keyboard give me results
when I press them under "showkey -s".  It's just F10/Spell that has no output.

> Ok, so then the button does have a keycode, after all. One more reason not to 
> trust xev... <sigh> :-) Did you try to put it into xmodmaprc and see if that 
> works?

xmodmap -e "keycode 432 = F10"

xev shows no output when I press F10/Spell after entering the above
command.

xmodmap -pke shows keycodes only up to 255, so 432 is probably an invalid
number for that purpose anyway, though it doesn't show any error when I assign
it as shown above.

I think I'm outta luck.  I have no idea what's so special about F10/Spell when
all of the other F-keys are recognized by xev.

> It's ok, since the keyboard is USB. The kernel seems to have something like a 
> reverse lookup table for keycode-to-scancodes queries if it uses a USB 
> keyboard. It seems the table is not complete, but it shouldn't be used by 
> anything anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Since the other F-keys work, maybe there's something missing in that kernel
table, somehow.

> The problem, if present, is with X, ignoring or swallowing this particular 
> keycode.

And only that keycode.

> Did you happen to try that  button in showkey? Does that produce a keycode?

No keycode.  It just turns the F-lock light on and off.  I think it's some kind
of a hardware switch. The keyboard documentation implies that it's a hardware
switch that's not under any kind of software control.

> Consider yourself lucky. One of my keyborads doesn't have it, and I'm 
> completely blind as to what will happen when I press F4 or such. As I am not 
> the only one using the system, refraining from touching F-lock key doesn't 
> help much.

I never look at my keyboard when I'm typing so it's always good for a surprise
if I hit the F-lock key by accident, especially because I'm not using that area
of the keyboard too much in the first place.  I might turn it off by mistake and
not notice for the next three hours.


-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com