[plug] Help needed - front buttons on laptop

[Richard Meyer]

Hi all,

I've been playing with my laptop, and most things work except the front
"dedicated audio/video control buttons".

I'm running KDE 3.5.1 under SUSE 10.1 and I've done a fair bit of
reading as to how to get it working.

I've tried using ~/.Xmodmap to put the following lines in, and the
uncommented lines do actually work - I get sound up and down and
mute/unmute.

My problem is that the amarok commands don't work (and even the mute
etc, are then left out), and the help under xmodmap is written as
reminder from the programmer to himself, not for teaching n00bs what the
program does.

The XF86AudioPause and such never worked, and if I read the entry of the
person that wrote it, some of them (he doesn't state which) didn't work
for him either.
> !! RMRMRM attempt to get the front keys to do something useful
> keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
> keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
> keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
> ! keycode 162 = /opt/kde3/bin/amarok --play-pause
> ! keycode 144 = /opt/kde3/bin/amarok --previous
> ! keycode 153 = /opt/kde3/bin/amarok --next
> ! keycode 164 = /opt/kde3/bin/amarok --stop
> 
> !! keycode 162 = XF86AudioPause
> !! keycode 144 = XF86AudioPrev
> !! keycode 153 = XF86AudioNext
> !! keycode 164 = XF86AudioStop

I have also tried setting the keycodes to keys that don't exist on my
keyboard - eg "F21", and then setting the shortcut (under KDE) to
amarok, (and it works- sorta) but I can't get the shortcut to pass the
"added parameters" - I'm really banging my head against the desk now -
any ideas?

I have also seen references to something called xhkeys - unfortunately I
doesn't really appear to be maintained.
> > Front Media Buttons
> > The volume control and play/pause/stop buttons at the front of the
> > laptop work wonderfully with xhkeys. My ~/.XHkeys file consists of:
> > 
> > xhkeys.codeline7:       164;0;A*;Amarok - stop;amarok -s
> > xhkeys.plugin1: xhkeys_cdaudio;cda;devname="/dev/cdrom";devgrab=n
> > xhkeys.codeline2:       174;0;A*;Master Volume Down;amixer sset
> Master 1-
> > xhkeys.plugin2:
> xhkeys_mixer;vol;devname="/dev/mixer"channel=-1;devgrab=n
> > xhkeys.codeline1:       160;0;A*;Master Volume Muted;amixer -c 0 set
> Master togglemute
> > xhkeys.codeline6:       153;0;A*;Amarok - next;amarok -f
> > xhkeys.codeline3:       176;0;A*;Master Volume Up;amixer sset Master
> 1+ unmute
> > xhkeys.codeline5:       144;0;A*;Amarok - previous;amarok -r
> > xhkeys.codeline4:       162;0;A*;Amarok - pause;amarok --pause
> > 
> > This is a fairly simple configuration file, and can be tweaked
> however
> > you want. You can create a file from scratch using "xhkconf"
-- 
Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au>