[Pan-users] Re: Changing menu key bidings

[Duncan]

JCA posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:39:52 +0000:

> &nbsp;&nbsp; I would like to change the key biding for marking a whole
> group as read from the default shift+ctrl+m.<br>To that effect, I
> followed the recipe in FAQ number 4.7: I clicked on the Newsgroups menu,
> then <br>placed the pointer on the Mark Group Read submenu. With the
> pointer still there, I typed the new <br>key sequence. Nothing happened.
> What am I doing wrong?<br><br><br>

First, one thing you are doing "wrong" is sending HTML formatted mail to
the PAN group/list.  There's a reason PAN doesn't do HTML.  Many in the
open source community consider it the choice of spammers and crackers
(or simply aoler/newbies) and either filter it outright, or display it as
plain text, which looks ugly (tho yours are better than many). Assuming
you are the latter, just a newbie not knowing better, there's still hope
that when asked, you'll change, so I'm asking.

As for your question...  I too prefer my own keybindings, so can
sympathize.  There are a several possibilities.  

You don't mention what the key sequence was, but the most common problem
for unmodified letter shortcuts is that they are already in use as an
accelerator in the menu -- the underlined letter for any entry.  On the
newsgroups menu, that's r,d,h,b,o,c,g,s,u,p,t.  Hitting any of those
letters will simply carry out the associated action for that menu, since
you are already there, making it impossible to directly assign those
letters, without modifier, to anything in that menu, from within pan,
anyway (but see below for a way to get around this restriction).

Delete, as a hotkey, is reserved, because hitting delete simply deletes
any previous hotkey associated with that action.  Similarly, I don't
believe the Tuxkey (aka winkey) can be used as a modifier, only Ctrl, Alt,
and Shft, so it's reserved.

It's also possible that the associated hotkey was already in use
elsewhere.  However, IIRC, PAN pops up a warning in that case, and you
said nothing happened...

In any case, there's an alternative method to map the keys.  Edit
~/.pan/data/accels.txt (that's from memory and the path might be slightly
off, but the file should be apparent from the name).  This file contains a
dump of the keyboard accelerators made at the time PAN is closed, loaded
when it is opened (thus, edit it with PAN closed). Most of the entries
will be commented out (IIRC with a ";"), indicating the listed hotkey is
the default -- it hasn't been changed.  Use your editor's search function
to find the entry you want to change -- don't try organizing them as PAN
scrambles the order again the next time it's closed.  (Or, if you do, save
it to a backup file, then copy the backup file to the one PAN uses every
time you make a change, so PAN is only scrambling the one it uses, not the
one you change.)  Make your changes, don't forget to uncomment any lines
you change, and save the file.  It may be useful to make a table of all
the keys down the left, with columns for each modifier combo, so you know
which ones are used and which not, and save this separately. Example:

key     un      a       c       s       ac      as      cs      acs
a       a       .       .       s-a     .       .       .       acs-a
b       ...
...

Finally, some versions of gtk+2, mostly early versions AFAIK tho it's
possible some distributions maintain the requirement, won't remap keys
unless  you have a special setting in your gtk2rc file.  If nothing
remaps, even after editing the  accels.txt file directly, post back and
I'll see if I can dig this info up.  However, most modern gtk+2 versions
seem to allow the remapping without this line, and the setting is a bit
obscure, so it's not worth worrying about unless you have to.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html