configuring desktop mouse actions

[avliet]

How the #$@%^$ do I configure mouse actions on the desktop?

Am I to believe that it is is possible to configure practically everything in KDE/kubuntu, except the way the 3 (or 5) most easily accessible buttons are handled

Why does button 1 do nothing, and how do I change the silly stickits of button 3?

I was a longtime user of KDE up-to 3.5. In 3.5 it was possible to attach custom menus to the 3 mouse buttons. (Desktop/behaviour menu). In KDE4 this disappeared. Has it reappeared somewhere different?

Although I like the look of KDE, this missing feature has caused me to switch to GNOME.

[Rog131]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

KDE 4.4 (The plan - February 9th, 2010: Release KDE SC 4.4)

Right click the desktop > Desktop Settings > Mouse Actions

[img width=400 height=202]http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/5742/mouseactions.png[/img]

[avliet]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

Seriously? Only in 4.4?

Current versions of KDE don't allow configuration of the 3 buttons/keys most accessible to the user? What else is missing?


I'll stick with GNOME. Maybe I come back when Kubuntu 10.10 has this.

[avliet]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

Just tried 4.4

Indeed I can now modify some actions of the mouse. However, there are only 5 different actions you can attach to a mouse button or the scroll-wheel (switch window/desktop, configuration and start menu).

It is still not possible to attach a custom menu (like in pre-3.5 KDE).

Why is it so hard to let the user *fully* configure the 3 (or 5) most accessible buttons on the system? You can configure any combination of keys on the keyboard to do just about anything, why not those 5 extra buttons as well

Back to GNOME...

[kubicle]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

AFAIK, the new mouse actions are plugin based (with currently only a couple of plugins/actions finished). So now that the plugin architecture is in place (in 4.4), there will probably be people writing new plugins for it (a "custom menu" plugin would probably be appreciated by many), just like there are currently a multitude of plugins for krunner.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of of "actions to add" are you looking for?
(For example, there is an additional "Favorites Launcher" mouse plugin available in rog's ppa for lucid, that one could use to show the favorites from kmenu...and create .desktop files for the needed commands in kmenueditor and add them to "favorites", which would show them in the mouse menu).

All in all, the new system is much more versatile (one can define modifier keys like Meta+RMB to access a different menus, use mouse wheel etc.) even though you can't do everything yet (but soon you probably will).

[Rog131]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

Just tried 4.4

Indeed I can now modify some actions of the mouse. However, there are only 5 different actions you can attach to a mouse button or the scroll-wheel (switch window/desktop, configuration and start menu).

Here 7.

Why is it so hard to let the user *fully* configure the 3 (or 5) most accessible buttons on the system? You can configure any combination of keys on the keyboard to do just about anything, why not those 5 extra buttons as well

By the Aaron Seigo (> Dropping remote content and wallpapers):

...I'm happy to help you with the "how" of writing a proper patch for a given feature, but if you don't do it then you'll have to wait until it rises to the top of my priority list which may be, depending on the feature, unpredictable...

More of the wishes > on feature requests.


As the "kubicle" told the new mouse actions are plugin based.

From the www.kde-look.org you could find > Favorites Launcher:

Description:
This is a \"containment action\" (mouse action) plugin for the KDE 4.4 Plasma Desktop (beta2 or better).

With this plugin, you can configure a mouse button click to invoke a menu with your favorite applications.

Instead of listing all applications, it only lists the Kickoff favorite applications. The code is written by Chani Armitage, I only modified it slightly to parse the favorites.

Here it is working fine.




Binaries (for the Lucid, may or may not work with the Karmic) > Personal Package Archives for Ubuntu >> PPA for Rog131 >>> Package name contains: mouse-action

Back to GNOME...

This is Linux, there are lot of options and you could use whatever works with you.

[kubicle]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

I wrote my own mouse plugin that will allow me to put anything in a mouse action menu (if it's a command you can run, you can put it in the menu):

I attached a screenshot of the menu in action, the last action in the menu is a custom command to sync my laptop with my server.

As there is no configuration dialog yet (I have to create the .desktop files by hand, and edit custommenu_mouseactionrc file by hand to arrange/add/remove items), I won't the upload the source anywhere yet, but if there's interest in the plugin...I'll look into finishing the plugin for "the masses".

I'd also appreciate if anyone knows whether someone is already working on something like it...I don't wish to duplicate the work.

[Vistaus]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

@Rog131: I can confirm that the package in your PPA (mouse-action-favorites-launcher) works fine on Karmic 9.10 with KDE 4.3.90

[Rog131]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

...but if there's interest in the plugin...

There is always interest .

I'd also appreciate if anyone knows whether someone is already working on something like it...I don't wish to duplicate the work.

I only know the Chani Armitage's (ChaniBlog) work and those seem to be in the KDE 4.4.

[KeithZG]

Re: configuring desktop mouse actions

Maybe if the "configure it to whatever arbitrary action" plugin gets into the main KDE release Linus will start using KDE again