Is there a way to change keyboard shortcuts/accelerators for non-KDE applications? In Gnome, there used to be a way. I think something along the lines of "hold down a key, select the menu item, then press the new keyboard shortcut". I'm specifically looking to add keyboard shortcuts to Pidgin, but a generic solution would be great.

Thanks in advance.

As long as the menu is not prcoessed through some appmenu daemon (topscreen / inside titlebar) the approach to press the menu entry and then a new shortcut w/o releasing should still work in Gtk+ applications. That's toolkit specific, not related to the current DE (you can do that with gtk+ applications w/o even any WM running)

luebking wrote:press the menu entry and then a new shortcut w/o releasing should still work in Gtk+ applications.

Thank you for the response, but I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Do you mean to:
1) click the menubar
2) hover over the entry
3) press the desired keyboard combination?

Also, how can I tell if an application is Gtk+, and is there a method for non-KDE, non-Gtk+ applications?

Seems there's meanwhile(?) a config key for this (gconf-editor, dconf-editor for gtk3) "can_change_accels" in /desktop/gnome/interface (those editors are sth. like the registry)

If set true, you can just hover the desired menu entry with the mouse and press a new shortcut.
It does however not work with all applications (and there's probably no list for those which support it)

Most simple way to determine the toolkit type is to set different GUI styles for Qt, Gtk+ and Gtk3

I tried toggling it to true, but it seems that Pidgin just doesn't support it.

Code: Select all

$ gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels
false
$ gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels true
$ gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels
true


Oh well. I seem to remember having similar issues in Unity and Gnome Shell, but I though that perhaps there was some KDE-native way of doing it. (I got excited by the Shortcuts pane in System Settings.) Thanks for your help anyway.