Re: Unity redefines F10

[Theodore Kilgore <kilgota banach math auburn edu>]

On Sat, 30 Apr 2011, William Kimber wrote:

> On Saturday 30 April 2011 04:32:42 Theodore Kilgore wrote:
> > On Fri, 29 Apr 2011, Yury V. Zaytsev wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > On Fri, 2011-04-29 at 03:52 -0400, Jabba Laci wrote:
> > > > Do you know how to get back F10 in Unity? I haven't found it yet.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's a PITA, affect yourself with this bug to increase the
> > > heat:
> > >
> > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/750700
> > >
> > > --
> > > Sincerely yours,
> > > Yury V. Zaytsev
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > While I fully agree that they should not do that, let me mention that I
> > faced the same problem a couple of years ago when I installed MC on a
> > Mac OS-10 system. The Mac already has F10 mapped to something like
> > "minimize window" or such. Also, for that matter, F9 already has a
> > specific meaning.
> >
> > In such situations it is possible to do some kind of re-mapping. Try to
> > figure out which of Cntl-F10, Alt-F10, Shift-F10 or whatever do not
> > already have a designated meaning, and re-map the exit function to one
> > of those. How I did that at the moment escapes me, but it was not that
> > difficult, actually.
> >
> > This is certainly not an ideal solution, but it can alleviate an
> > annoyance, at least to some extent.
> >
> > Also, while one could hardly expect OS-10 to accommodate the key
> > conventions of MC, I do emphatically agree that a Linux distribution
> > really ought to. MC has a long and widespread usage pattern on Linux,
> > and distros ought simply to understand that there are going to be lots
> > of people who continue to want to use it no matter what kind of fancy
> > new desktop designs that they want to introduce.
> One of  the reasons the don't bother about keeping the mc keys is that 
> they do not put mc in the distro.  Why I have no idea as it is the first 
> thing I have to add.


Well, AFAIR the same could be said about several distros, starting with 
Debian (which might account for mc being missing in the default Ubuntu 
install) and, I think, Red Hat as well. Why? I have no idea, either.

But if you do get into a jam about this on some new system and cannot 
otherwise get out, then as I rememember it is is indeed possible to re-map 
the F10 key's functionality to something else which is "close enough" to 
avoid acute discomfort. I forget now exactly how I did it, though. I think 
it had something to do with MC setup functions but at this point I cannot 
be sure. As my students in calculus courses say about things like basic 
trigonometry, "Sir, it has been a long time since I studied that."

Theodore Kilgore