[CLUE-Tech] Fn key questions

[Matt Gushee]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 10:00:03PM -0600, David Willson wrote:
> 
> I can't answer your question about keyboard remapping, but I can tell
> you that my DELL Inspiron 8100 has a <CONTROL> key in the
> lower-left-most corner.
> 
> On Thu, 2003-06-19 at 00:03, koyllana emodhosey wrote:

> > I find that just about every brand/model of notebook with that type of
> > keyboard has the Fn key in the lower-left corner.  [image]
> >  
> > I am very much used to having the Left-Ctrl key in that corner....
> >  
> > So, is there a way under linux (particularly RH 9.0) to swap the Fn
> > and Left-Ctrl keys ?

I don't know, but Linux is certainly more flexible in this regard than
Windows or Mac. So if it's possible at all, it should be possible with
any Linux distribution.

But the function key is a special-purpose key, generally used for
actions that directly control the hardware, so I don't think it's
handled in the same way as normal keys. The way keyboard mapping works
under Linux (or this may be X-specific ... text mode keyboard mapping is
separate and may work differently, but I've only ever done keyboard
mapping under X) is:

 * When you press the key, it generates a signal called a keycode (which
   is usually represented as a hexadecimal number). The keycode is
   fixed, I think ... or at least you'd have to do some pretty deep
   hacking to change it.
 * Keycodes are mapped to keysyms, which are more-or-less human-readable
   symbols such as 'A', 'Space', and 'CapsLock'.

So, *if* the Fn key generates a keycode, it should be possible to remap
it. But I suspect that is not the case. It isn't, at least, on my
laptop. There's a utility called 'showkey'. When you run it, it reports
the keycode of any key that you press. On my machine, it's not showing
anything for the Fn key.

P.S. If you do want to remap a keyboard at some point, I highly
recommend the XKeycaps program. It's an X application that lets you
select a key from an image of a keyboard (supports many models) and
choose which keysym that key will produce.

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
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