Disable 'grave' button in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I want to bind in "guake terminal" grave ` button to some action, but can't do this, always get exception that "Cannot bind global grave button".

Also I disabled ALT+`

for "switches windows of current application" in unity, and now this shortcut works in "guake", but just ` doesn't work still.

Maybe some suggestion or some ideas how to check what application uses this hot-key and deny it, to have ability to use in "guake". Thanks.

Information about grave button

If you run xev -event keyboard and then press the key, what output do you get? — Seth, May 13 '14 at 02:35
https://gist.github.com/sbojchuk/e34fd6cf2ed6bc60da17 - last three lines when I press 'grave' — Yaroslav Boichuk, May 13 '14 at 05:45
and now, I get other output from above command - https://gist.github.com/sbojchuk/410dbb8a3816f512010a — Yaroslav Boichuk, May 13 '14 at 11:52
so, after I try to bind in guake grave button (and get error) I get output like was in first comment, and after reboot, I get second output. — Yaroslav Boichuk, May 13 '14 at 12:06
Same issue here. Sometimes it binds somtimes not. Is very annoying since I was very accustomed to use dead grave for guake. — Diosney, May 19 '14 at 17:50

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 14 '20 at 11:50

There are two keysyms for grave, grave and dead_grave, by default dead_grave is set to the ` key. xmodmap can be used to change it, and should be in Ubuntu by default (with arch install xorg-xmodmap).

To change it from the default dead_grave to grave, run:

xmodmap -e "keycode  49 = grave notsign grave notsign brokenbar notsign brokenbar notsign"

The rest of the values are various modifiers, e.g. the second one is shift.

If you want this to be permanent, create ~/.Xmodmap, and then add just:

keycode  49 = grave notsign grave notsign brokenbar notsign brokenbar notsign

If there are any other dead keys you're having trouble with, run:

xmodmap -pke | grep dead

And it should give you a list of dead keys. Alternatively you could run:

xmodmap -pke >> ~/.Xmodmap

You will then have a full list of keyboard keys and their sym values in .Xmodmap, which makes it easy to change your dead keys and any other keys to whatever custom layout you like.

thank you, I will check, but for me, it works fine on Ubuntu 18.04 now. If I faced this issue again, will proceed with your approach. — Yaroslav Boichuk, May 14 '20 at 15:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '15 at 17:08

Finally I was able to bind on the dead grave key, the issue was due a keyboard language conflict.

You can try to binding on two different characters that represent the dead grave key, namely: dead grave and the ` character, and one of them will win.

The character that worked for me was the ` character.

Disable 'grave' button in Ubuntu 14.04

2 Answers2