Can't seam to assign alt+F1 to pop up the kmenu???? [Kubuntu Intrepid alpha 6]

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

It would appear that on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 Willy K. Hamra did say:


> KDE4 has it's problems all right, and so is intrepid, but you're just
> being harsh. have you read the list of known bugs?
> http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha6

OK perhaps I was being a bit harsh, But it felt harsh to me. It seams
like all control settings are going to be primarily made with the rodent
in hand. Which annoys me a bit because I lack some of the hand/eye/screen
coordination needed to use the dang thing well. I do a little better with
track balls but even then it's usually easier for me to type 30 or forty
words than to get the gosh durned rodent accurately pointed at anything I
need to click on. (and that's not to say I consider myself a typist... If
it weren't for spell check, even I wouldn't know what I typed most of the
time...)

And I'll confess I hadn't read the bug list... Thanks for the url ;-)

> it says that keyboard shortcuts have problems, and clearly states how to
> fix this.

IF that's what was meant by the expression "some keys might misbehave in X",
then I suppose it shouldn't be hard too set the keyboard model to "Generic
Evdev-managed"... 

> kcontrol is gone for ever i assume, it doesn't exist anymore, get over
> it, there are other ways to change settings around the system, and
> systemsettings is there for a reason.

<Sigh> Yeah I figured kcontrol was gone I liked it too much, and that
usually spell the end of things {Though how the Nielsens seam to know
which shows I've just begun to like, so they can  kill them off so
promptly I'll never know...:-(  } And while I dislike the point'n click
intensive style of windowfull of icons that seams to have replaced it. I
CAN, given enough time, make the few settings I need to with it.

I'm not sure if the way you typed "systemsettings" as on word implies a
command name that will call it up from the run prompt the way kcontol
used to call up the old control center or not but next time I boot
intrepid I'll sure find out. 


> apparently, you are very confused about KDE4 and dislike so many of it's
> features because you are missing the one and probably most important
> feature in KDE4, PLASMA! everything around you on the screen (almost
> everything) is a plasmoid. the k-menu included. and so are the other
> stuff around the desktop you hate. right-click the desktop, and click
> add widget, click unlock widgets if you couldn't find the add widgets
> menu entry. now you can remove and add widgets from there. (widgets are
> plasmoids) you can remove the default k-menu and add the old k-menu if
> you want, and put anything you like! plasma is a very fun thing to mess
> and play around with. i compiled and installed the win-embed plasmoid
> http://ksvladimir.blogspot.com/2008/06/converting-any-window-into-plasmoid.html,
> i can't live without it now. the thing labeled desktop is the plasmoid
> called pager BTW.

Maybe that is something to do with my problem. I don't actually think
visually. I usually configure kde to not even allow icons on my desktop.
I open MOST applications from the run prompt or call them from a konsole
command line. When  I'm done actively using an application that I don't
want to terminate, I minimize it, when I can finally see an unimpeded view
of my "wallpaper" I know I've completed all the tasks I set up to do on
that desk top. When I get an unimpeded view of the "wallpaper" on all 4
of my desktops, I know it's time to decide if I'm going to use my PC to
"play", watch TV, or check with my lady about what she'd like us to do...
To me it seams like these plasmoids are just a way to have what I'd call
fancy semi-interactive icons cluttering up my background image when I
don't have any non-minimized open windows in the way. In which case I
don't want them. Especially if I gotta control them with the (to me)
laborious, time consuming process of manipulating the &%&*)%^& rodent
into just the right position to click, right click etc.. to do something
that I used to be able to do (most of) with just my keyboard.  

When you say I can put back the old kmenu do you mean the whole thing?
Or do you mean the several separate pieces of it that seem to coincide
with the "categories" you get when you select one of the horizontal row
of buttons that line the bottom of the new style k-menu... I don't feel
like it's the old k-menu when I gotta right click on the menu start
button to change the currently displayed category.  A process that for me
is both time consuming  and laborious to wrestle with the ^%^(&% rodent
until I finally have the pointer on just the right spot so I can HOPE I
don't accidentally let it drift to far from the spot while I try to
"click" on it.. {took me almost 2 minutes just to successfully right
click on the k-menu start button, and select the old k-menu style} And
that didn't count selecting a category... Speaking of which, I couldn't
find a setting that defaulted to displaying ALL of the said categories...

I suppose that IF I can figure out the actual the command names of all
those menu items that I don't use enough to just remember what to type at
the run prompt to invoke them, then I could pick the k-menu style I liked
best and then use menu edit to add in all the choices from the other
categories, But I'm doubtful that KDE would automatically add new menu
items to it for newly installed software that happened to normally get
inserted into one of the other categories.


> KDE4 is still in development, and so is intrepid, it got it's flaws, but
> no, it's not yuck at all. i like it with all it's bugs and huger
> cockroaches. i do have some issues with some apps missing with no
> similar alternatives, like kooka for example. but it's good, it works, i
> chat, i browse the net, i print, i collaborate with others using samba
> shares, i use IRC, i scan using xsane (not exactly kooka, but still
> decent), i read email on thunderbird, and i play games! it hasn't
> crashed a single time, i started using it in alpha5, apps crash
> sometimes, but not the apps i'm using, usually background processes are
> the ones that crash a lot. and apport is very helpful for identifying
> them. so basically, IT WORKS! it still can't do rocket science projects,
> but that's not what almost all ppl's daily uses are!

Well I'm glad somebody finds it useful. But to me anytime mouse
intensive control methods supplant rather than supplement existing
keyboard control methods it is very much a "yuck"... As is every time an
existing list of selectable text items is supplanted with icon _ONLY_
views of the same selections. The original reason why I chose kde
instead of gnome was that back then, kde tended to organize things in
menu choices, where I could find things even when I didn't know they existed
prior to my browsing the menu. And when I'd ask a gnome user how the
heck they did something in gnome I invariably was told that I just needed to
put the mouse someplace { that usually wasn't labeled } and right click on it
to get a pop-up choice to do what I wanted... DANG IT! I hates computer
rodents more than Yosemite Sam ever hated rabbits... 

-- 
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|   <#>   <#>	   Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
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