Microsoft keyboard zoom function

[khaytsus]

I have just replaced my ailing Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard which has surprisingly served me well for about 11 years.. I've replaced it with the (wired) Microsoft Natural 4000 which all is working fine on except for the Zoom slider. It'd be handy to be able to map it somehow and so far no luck. There is also the Microsoft 7000 which is a wireless keyboard which appears to have the same slider key. It just creates repeated events when held up or down, nothing really special.

xev does not pick up inputs from it at all, however the program showkey does:

# press up
keycode 418 press
keycode 418 release
# press down
keycode 419 press
keycode 419 release

I've tried xbindkeys per some results on google, but it won't map anything >255. I keep reading about "keytouch" but not quite sure how to use it and seems a bit kludgy, but if that's the best solution I can try it again.

I've been googling and can't find anything, so I'm going to see if the Fedora mailing list and/or here have any suggestions. Thanks!

[David Batson]

When trying to configure a hotkey combo on my Thinkpad, xev showed nothing really for Fn + F7, but in fact this combo was generating keycode XF86Display. You can try xmodmap -pke to see all the configured keycodes. If you see something for zoom, maybe you can remap it in /home/~/.Xmodmap. Thats what I did with Fn + F7. I mapped keycode 235 (XF86Display) to F30. This stopped gnome-settings-daemon from ursurping XF86Display and let me us Fn + F7 (keycode F30) to launch my own script.

[khaytsus]

Originally Posted by David Batson

When trying to configure a hotkey combo on my Thinkpad, xev showed nothing really for Fn + F7, but in fact this combo was generating keycode XF86Display. You can try xmodmap -pke to see all the configured keycodes. If you see something for zoom, maybe you can remap it in /home/~/.Xmodmap. Thats what I did with Fn + F7. I mapped keycode 235 (XF86Display) to F30. This stopped gnome-settings-daemon from ursurping XF86Display and let me us Fn + F7 (keycode F30) to launch my own script.

How did you determine the key was generating keycode 235? So far I can't assign the key to anything, only time I see any response to moving it is when running the "showkey" program.

[David Batson]

From reading a bug report I learned that gnome-settings-daemon was using keycode XF86Display to switch displays. Using xmodmap -pke I searched for XF86Display. xmodmap -pke showed keycode 235 was XF86Display.

I was just throwing some ideas out there. Not sure if anything I wrote will help your situation.

Maybe the following is of more help:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=60077

http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Mi..._Keyboard_4000

http://etherealpanda.blogspot.com/20...yboard-in.html

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Slackware_12_0

[khaytsus]

Originally Posted by David Batson

From reading a bug report I learned that gnome-settings-daemon was using keycode XF86Display to switch displays. Using xmodmap -pke I searched for XF86Display. xmodmap -pke showed keycode 235 was XF86Display.

I was just throwing some ideas out there. Not sure if anything I wrote will help your situation.

Maybe the following is of more help:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=60077

http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Mi..._Keyboard_4000

http://etherealpanda.blogspot.com/20...yboard-in.html

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Slackware_12_0

Wow, okay so especially the Gentoo posts makes think that if evdev doesn't see it, it ain't gonna work in X without a kernel change. The patch that I see all over doesn't look very good in some ways (semi-blindly changes the keycode) plus I don't want to deal with spinning my own kernel really. If it were a bunch of the keys that's one thing but this is just the zoom key that isn't working.

I might file a bugzilla on it and see where it goes. Sounds like X11 has a big part in this, I wonder why it hasn't been fixed.. Much of this 255 limitation goes back to 2006 or earlier.