I’m a big fan of my DataHand (or one of these) but overtime I’ve found the Ctrl and Alt modifiers a bit uncomfortable.
One of my favorite hotkeys is to use the ctrl key with left or right to move between words but that has me regularly holding down the key.
The solution I’ve found is to use a USB foot pedal, here are the steps to set it up on Ubuntu.
First use evtest to determine the /dev/input/event number and the button codes
evtest
/dev/input/event16: OLYMPUS CORPORATION HID FootSwitch RS Series Select the device event number [0-16]:
Event: time 1456855230.136267, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1456855230.528267, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90011 Event: time 1456855230.528267, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 272 (BTN_LEFT), value 0 Event: time 1456855230.528267, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------ Event: time 1456855230.872269, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 90012 Event: time 1456855230.872269, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 273 (BTN_RIGHT), value 1
Then use evrouter to map the buttons by creating a file called ~/.evrouterrc with the following contents (you’d likely need to update the values).
"" "" any key/272 "XKey/Control_L" "" "" any key/273 "XKey/Alt_L"
And then run evrouter
evrouter /dev/input/event16
Hillel Coren 