This is a niche problem, but making a reference if it helps anyone!
If you have a keyboard with built in shortcut keys and you want to reprogram them, what do you do? I had a kinesis freestyle 2 keyboard (mac and PC versions) that had two rows of built in shortcut keys mapped to a mac, but I wanted to use it on a PC (no way to return for PC dedicated version and printed keys have different shortcuts).
If you go to kinesis' website - a bit user hostile customer service in my experience - they will tell you there is no way to remap the existing buttons... and then they'll happily link you to buying a new $200 keyboard, their "Pro" model, if you want remappable buttons.
Of course there is an easy fix. While there are multiple approaches, I turned to a kind soul with a free utility they've released to make the world a bit better. The utility for Windows is called "SharpKeys" by RandyRants.com and on a Mac, you have a system setting you can change. Here is a good write up on that by Matt Klein at "howtogeek"
After remapping the control and command keys and purposefully assigning the web back and forward buttons, I then had a useful keyboard... no thanks to Kinesis and their upsell tactic leaving their customers (who paid a premium for their ergonomic keyboard) in the dark with an easy solution in reach..
I installed vmware on my Window 8.1 HP Envy x360 PC in early december. Late december I noticed it was difficult using it as help files of any application in use just keeps sprouting up. Even when there are no applications in the window help files window shows up few minutes after a restart.
I tried many suggestions online: removing HP redundant programs, Cleaning the system of malware and spyware, reviewing/disabling accessibility settings, still no luck. I later learnt from someone's comment on one forum that he noticed this happened on his pcs with vmware installedI finally had to display window key since the behaviour was as though the window key was perpetually pressed down such that typing letter "n", "e" or the "delete" key opens the help file of the program in use or those of windows.
Now with window key disabled the situation relatively better as I can read on the pc and do some programming task; but I still get the randow opening of help files when I click "n", "e" or "delete" keys (imagine how difficult it is to type in MSWord under this situation). The exception is that this doesn't occur while using Firefox.
Any idea what's going on?
I discovered the behaviour was a mimicking of window shotcuts involving the window key. So to temporarily solve this (since I didn't want to uninstall vmware) was to disable window key. I found some registry script at http://johnhaller.com/useful-stuff/disable-windows-key which I used.
This helped but when using certain programs (chrome and MSWord) typing any of n, b or delete key launches the help file so I used AutoHotKey - autohotkey.com to write lines of script to disable any SHIFT key shortcut combination
I would like to create an application for Windows that is visible in the system tray and can detect the current open window. The application that I want to make should also be able to "press on the users keyboard": sending out keyboard shortcuts to the current open window/application.
How would I go about doing this? What programming languages/tools would be useful?
Best would even be if it is portable to Mac, but this is not a must.
Portability: Not very likely you can find anything that is cross-platform for this.
For Windows: AutoIt. Does everything you want and a lot more.
For Mac: Applescript (standard component of OSX) can probably do this, but I could be wrong about that. I do have a Mac, but I never had a reason to play around with this sort of stuff.
I've used Hummingbird Exceed as my Xserver on my windows box for years. I've almost always worked out of xterms, but at times the number of open windows can get a bit out of control and hard to manage. Wondering if there is a terminal emulator that runs on WinXP that supports tabbed windows, similar to Konsole on KDE.
Have you looked at Poderosa ? From the web page
Tabbed style GUI
It is convenient to open multiple connections at the same time.
Moreover, you can split the window
into panes and allocate each
connection. Many different ways to
connect| In addition to Telnet and
SSH1/2, local cygwin shell and serial
ports are supported.
PuTTyCM (PuTTy Connection Manager)
Too bad, its website is down right now, but the hard link still works http://puttycm.free.fr/download/puttycm.exe
Does KDE on Cygwin help?
You could also have a look at Super Putty.
It is similar to PuttyCM with a tabbed layout, but I have found it easier to use for saving and restoring sessions and layouts. Details can be found here
Edit:
My tool of choice for tabbed SSH on Windows now is MobaXterm.
I have used both PuttyCM and SuperPutty before. MobaXterm gives you a lot more options including saving credentials, XWindows support out of the box, ability to reconnect sessions, a sftp browser to copy files and many other useful features.
I'm trying to have the same KDE Konsole experience within Mac OS X.
Here's my (overly complicated?) setup:
I have Control and Command swapped at the System Preferences level. (Can't live without this)
Parallels lets you, at the Parallels application level, also reverse Control and Command. So I can undo the System Preferences setting (and get the setup I want within virtual Linux)
I want this same per-application-opt-out for the Mac OS X Terminal app. Is it possible?
The solution you're looking for is KeyRemap4MacBook. There is a Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion version.
Once installed, goto System Preferences -> KeyRemap4MacBook
Then select the following options:
Change Command_L Key (Left Command)
---> Command_L to Control_L (except Terminal, Virtual Machine, RDC)
Change Control_L Key (Left Control)
---> Control_L to Command_L (except Terminal, Virtual Machine, RDC)
You can repeat this for Command_R (Right Command) and Control_R (Right Control) also if you desire. Tested and working on my Macbook.
You can simply ssh into the Linux/Unix system and run X11 programs direct to your Mac screen: ssh -X user#host_or_ipaddress, login, and just run the X11 programs you want (e.g. emacs&) and the X11 apps will appear on the Mac display.
Pros:
X11 windows work just like any other window, including Exposé goodness, etc...
No need to work only inside the Parallels console window
Same solution works with any Linux/Unix system, remote or virtual
ssh connection is secure even over the internet
Tech info:
"ssh -X" turns on X11 forwarding for the ssh connection, i.e. the X11 display connection is tunneled through ssh securely
"ssh -X" also handles X11 authentication tunneling
X11.app is automagically started on OSX by launchd when needed
X11 can connect to displays over the network, which is one of the few cool things about it ;-)
There is very good and key-mapping flexible terminal: iTerm2
My favorite set: iTerm + zsh + oh-my-zsh
The 2016 solution is to use Karabiner open-source program which allows you to remap modifier and other keys with very fine granularity, for example
Remap only the left ⌘ Cmd or Option key.
Remap a key only for specific applications, e.g. only inside Terminal, Emacs, or virtual machine.
For example, here's how to remap left ⌘ Cmd key to act as Ctrl only inside Terminal (and leave the right one unaffected so that you could still use e.g. ⌘ Cmd + Tab to switch between apps):
You can customize the command keys used for an individual application in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts. I think (if I understand correctly what you're trying to do) that this might allow you to accomplish your goal. You could remap all of Terminal's command keys to use control instead of command, to get them out of your way... but then you might need to do a lot of customization on the machines you ssh into, so that they use Command instead of control
It seems that you're going to have to do an ENORMOUS amount of work just to allow you to use your pinky instead of your thumb for the modifier key.
Another possibility: user preferences can be manipulated by the "defaults" command. I haven't been able to find a way to use this to control they modifier key mappings, but it should logically be possible (if you're willing to do a lot of digging). If so, then you could write short scripts to switch back and forth between Mac default and your swapped mode. Trigger the scripts with Quicksilver, and whenever you use Terminal you can call one script, and whenever you leave it you can call another. Again, a big pain to achieve what you want, but it might be possible.
I don't think there's a clean and simple solution.
I've seen third-party programs that give more control over manipulating modifier keys, if you're willing to install them (probably kernel extensions). They might be able to do what you want, but I don't recall the names. If you google for programs to fix emacs and vi keys you might find them.
Good luck.
I had exactly the same problem as you. I've remapped Command to CAPS Lock, and Control to Command, but as a frequent Linux user I want both setups to be as similar as possible. This is how I solved it:
Install Keyboard Maestro (not free, but totally worth it), and set it up to run at login.
Inside KM, define macros to send CMD+{key} to CTRL+{key} inside Terminal.
If you want to remap a lot of keys this is a lot of work. But I've already done it myself, you can just download this file kmmacros. Double-clicking is enough to install it. A couple of caveats:
You need to set Terminal to use option as a meta key (Terminal > Preferences > Keyboard).
The bindings are only for emacs-mode. This cheat sheet should be helpful.
Most default shortcuts don't work anymore (CMD-N, CMD-C, ...), and the menu in Terminal does not reflect this. For some conflicts (New Window, Close Window), I've taken the ones from Gnome.