Re: Stop alt-spacebar window menu

["Brian J. Tarricone" <bjt23 cornell edu>]

On 05/27/2009 09:45 PM, Emmanuel Rodriguez wrote:
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Brian J. Tarricone<bjt23 cornell edu>wrote:
>
> > Bill Farmer wrote:
> >
> > > I am porting a native windows application to linux gtk. I want to stop the
> > > alt-spacebar key combination popping up the application window menu. This
> > > can be done in windows by capturing the WM_SYSCHAR message. After searching
> > > though the gtk documentation and sources, the only way I can see to do this
> > > is by copying a file from the gdk sources, modifying it, and compiling it
> > > with the application.
> > You probably will not have any success doing this unless you are able to
> > control the user's environment.  Things work differently on X11 than on
> > Windows.  The alt+space key combo is likely handled by the window manager,
> > which will eat the key and react to it and not even pass it on to your
> > application.
> >
> > I'd suggest not using shortcuts that use only alt as the modifier. While
> > there's no standard relating to this, usually those end up getting
> > "reserved" for use by the window manager, or for accessing menus via the
> > keyboard.
> Gnome-terminal allows the user to map keyboard shortcuts using the alt key.
> You could take a look at their code an see how they do it

No, you've missed the point.  Setting alt+ shortcuts is certainly 
possible.  There's nothing special you have to do that's different from 
using any other modifier key.  But if the window manager has grabbed a 
particular key *combination* for its own use, there's absolutely nothing 
you can do about it.

        -brian