Apparently, importing ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc is enough for the shortcut to show up in the System Settings, but not enough to load the shortcut. Disabling, applying and re-enabling and applying again also doesn’t help, and neither does re-assigning to the same shortcut, which resulted in this lovely error dialog.
I thought “meta” referred to the Alt key and “super” referred to the key that usually has the Winblows logo on it. Was I wrong or is the terminology just inconsistent?
This 15 year old post on AskUbuntu explains the differences between those keys, and their historical background: https://askubuntu.com/questions/19558/what-are-the-meta-super-and-hyper-keys
Gotta love those legacy paradigms. Thanks for the link!
The Alt key is Alt. Why would it need another label?
There’s quite a long convoluted history to key names. In the early days there were META1…META4… which were typically assigned to SHIFT, CONTROL, ALTERNATE, COMMAND, OPTION, [OS NAME], and others.
KDE calls “super” “meta” for some reason.
In emacs that is what those keys are called
Although I’m not sure about that, my first reaction to the super key, not working would be to press other keys like control our alt
No they are interchangeable
Well, no, they aren’t. Cuz they’re two different keys. What you mean is that they’re referred to inconsistently, which is bad in a technical discipline.
I never saw the Alt key referred to as anything else than Alt
On MacOS it is option or something
Mostly older Linux apps refer to Alt as Meta. But since those apps predate the “Windows key”, it seems foolish to also start calling that meta.
Wait there wasnt a Windows key since forever?
Computer keyboards have been around since at least the 70s and the Windows key only started appearing on keyboards with the release of Windows 95. I am a child of the 80s and my first 3 or 4 computers had keyboards with no Windows key.
TIL!
But to be honest, that was also pretty much before standardization. I have never seen anyone use Meta for the Alt key.
Its definitely not common. But especially in Unix-like software, referring to the Windows key as Meta introduces unnecessary confusion, especially to newcomers.
Prime example: a lot of newcomers use Nano as their terminal text editor. It refers to the Alt key with the abbreviation M for Meta. So someone who’s already taking a huge plunge into a vast and complicated technical topic has to first learn that M means Meta which means Alt and then also has to learn that in other contexts, Meta means the Windows key.
Now, maybe the solution is for Nano to change, not Plasma. But one way or another, it should be standardized.