After using Windows for some time I've got accustomed to having weird vim-like hotkeys using AutoHotkey. I've not found a satisfactory solution for Linux until I stumbed across kbd-mangler. kbd-mangler gives low-level access to keyboard and mouse events, so I am trying to use this to create an AHK-like experience, or at least recover my keybindings. The problem with kbd-mangler is that it is from 2010 and thus quite old. It depends on mozillas's js library libmozjs which has been deprecated long ago. However, one can get the required c library from older releases of xul-runner. In 2010, they didn't build xul-runner for x64 when doing stable releases, but they did on nightlies! So here is a guide on how to build kbd-mangler and get going with writing your own system-wide hotkeys!

NOTE: I did not write most of this code myself; this is just a small repackaging and updated guide to use the software written by Gena Batyan to whom all credit is due!

• git clone this repository down.
• download the appropriate version of xulrunner from here (remember to download the sdk version)
• extract the zip archive you just downloaded to wherever you'd like: I've used opt/xulrunner-sdk-1.9.2.1pre
• modify the Makefile to make LDFLAGS and CFLAGS point to the location of the xulrunner sdk.
• run make in the repo directory
• kbd-mangler should be built successfully!
• inspect run.sh and follow the instructions in there to find your keyboard device file
  • remember to edit the export LD_LIBRARY_PATH line as to point to your xulrunner sdk folder (same as for LDFLAGS)
• use sudo ./run.sh [YOUR_SCRIPT_FILE] to make the magic appear!
• in adam/ and examples/ there are some inspirational scripts -- specifically the adam/ahk.js file is what I personally use.

Since run.sh will need to be run with sudo, you need to allow your user to run it as root with no password. On Ubuntu/Debian you can do this by appending the following line to visudo or a file in /etc/sudoers.d:

[your_user] ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: [path_to_run_sh]

Where [your_user] and [path_to_run_sh] should be substituted with your username and the path to run.sh respectively.

Now you can add a line to .xprofile or something similar to start run.sh on login

sudo [path_to_run_sh] [path_to_your_js_script]

See the documentation for kbd-mangler for more information (can also be found in the docs folder).

• Why this compared to e.g. autokey? Many other solutions may not require sudo privileges, but capture key input on a higher level using e.g. X. This is a problem for applications that do not use this framework. For example, the kitty terminal does not respect autokey's configuration. Using kbd-mangler, we don't have this problem. On the other hand, it must be run as root.
• Why javascript? kbd-mangler uses javascript and I've not had time to port it to something else.
• Why such an old version of js? See answer above :). Pull requests are welcome!