Ytdyklly

I have a ThinkPad W540. On its keyboard there are four multimedia keys above the numpad. Two of those keys generate keycodes (and, apparently, scancodes) that correspond to combination of keys, Win_L + L and Win_L + E. In other words, for the key that generates Win_L + L,
showkey --scancodes returns this:

0xe0 0x5b 0x26 0xa6 0xe0 0xdb

The setkeycodes command requires either single byte unescaped or escaped two-byte sequences to denote scan codes, and showkey gives me way more than that, so I can't quite re-map that key to one of the free keycodes in my system with a straightforward setkeycodes <scancode> <keycode>.

I would really appreciate any hints how I can remap that key to something else that doesn't simply duplicate one of the existing key combinations on my keyboard.

You can do this in two steps:

1. to catch key combinations


2. to simulate typing different keys.

You can use xchainkeys for 1. and [xdotool][2] for 2.:

To create the simulated new key with xdotool, the option --clearmodifiers of key may be important to neutralize the original simulated modifier press:

xdotool key --clearmodifiers Shift+a

This should type a capital A as a test.

In the configuration of xchainkeys in ~/.config/xchainkeys/xchainkeys.conf, we can bind the command to a key combination:

W-l :exec xdotool key --clearmodifiers Shift+a

Now, the key combination Win and l (Win left or right do the same), as well as the key that generates Win_L + L, should create a capital A.

(There are many other programs available for both parts. For the first, one could use the hotkey configuration of a desktop environment, but I prefer to keep it independent of DEs.)

This is what I did on my Thinkpad Yoga in order to rebind the backslash/pipe key to the correct key. Because for some reason in every Linux Virtual Machine it interpreted the backslashpipe (|) key as the less than (<) key.

First execute the command: xev

Press the desired key to get the keycode for the key you want to rebind:

In this example the Keycode is 94 and the action is "less" but we want it to have the action of backslash and bar aka "pipe"

Remap the keycode 94 to the backslash and bar key aka "pipe":

xmodmap -e 'keycode 94 = backslash bar'

Now lets make this persistent:

xmodmap -pke | egrep "backslash|bar" | grep 94 > ~/.Xmodmap`

Returns the following to the file ~/.Xmodmap:

keycode  94 = backslash bar backslash bar

Then you must create the following file to finish making it persistent:

echo "xmodmap .Xmodmap" > ~/.xinitrc