Re: Stop alt-spacebar window menu

[Dave Howorth <dhoworth mrc-lmb cam ac uk>]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> 2.  Suggest that users disable conflicting key bindings or, if that's
> not possible, use a different WM that doesn't have a conflicting key
> binding (or is configurable).
>
> You can't.  The WM doesn't care what app is focused.  It'll eat the key
> regardless.
>
> And besides, even if you do find a solution for GNOME, what about people
> who run KDE?  Xfce?  LXDE?  *box?  Ratpoison?  ......

Bill's problem is interesting. It seems like a real reason to want to
use particular keys. And X11's motto is 'mechanism not policy' so I'd
persist in trying to find a solution for a while :)

I don't know the answer but I've found a few hints.

(1) a lot of window managers allow you to configure their keybindings
(e.g. kwin, xfwm, icewm) so maybe that is worth looking at.

(2) The ICCM says <http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-6.html#s-6.3>
"Window managers should ensure that they provide some mechanism for
their clients to receive events from *all* keys and all buttons" (my
emphasis) so there's some hope that every window manager will allow
reconfiguration. The bad news is that they may all do it in different ways.

(3) there is a program called rdesktop that lists the following option
"-K Do not override window manager key bindings. By default rdesktop
attempts to grab all keyboard input when it is in focus."
Which suggests there might be a way to do what you want.

(4) I found the following tantalising hint "It is possible
to replace most window managers on the fly now with the ââreplace
switch", which opens another possibility :)

Cheers, Dave