Assign arrow keys as shortcuts?

[eepjr24]

I was going to map the arrow keys to scroll the page up and down but I can't get GIMP to even recognize pressing the keys. If I try ALT-UpArrow (or SHIFT or CTRL) I just get Invalid Shortcut. Any idea why this is the case? Anyone have a work around or something that you use to scroll instead? 

- Ernie

[programmer_ceds]

I'm using GIMP 2.10.22 on Linux Mint 20 with a mouse that has a tilt-wheel. Scrolling pans vertically (and I seem to remember that this was also the case on Windows) and the tilt-wheel pans horizontally.

I have the following notes that I made when using Windows:

X-Mouse Buttons - Use Mouse Tilt Wheel to pan left/right in GIMP

In GIMP "Edit/Keyboard Shortcuts"
Expand the "View" category
Left-click on "Scroll left" then press Ctrl/ALT/L
Similarly for "Scroll right" Ctrl/Alt/R
In X-Mouse Buttons select the settings for GIMP (create a new "Application / Window Profile" if necessary)
For "Tilt Wheel Left" select "Simulated Keys (pressed)"
In the "Enter the custom key(s)" box type (without the quotes:
"{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L{CTRL}{ALT}L"
Similarly for "Tilt Wheel Right" (but replace the 'L' characters with 'R' characters

If you had a five-button mouse without a tilt-wheel you could change the above instructions to use the extra buttons instead of the tilt-wheel.

X-Mouse Buttons is freeware which is available for Windows (but not, unfortunately, for Linux)

[eepjr24]

Thanks, programmer_ceds, but I use a laptop TouchPad right now, so no mouse wheels for me. I be getting a tablet for Xmas, hopefully that will mitigate some problems. Curious why they would not allow arrow key assignment though.

- E

[rich2005]

You are a hero, using a touchpad. I can not manage without a mouse.  I thought a key combination using page-up / page-down keys might work. They assign but do nothing here (using laptop). Just using touchpad, there is the navigation window (clicking on the icon at the right bottom corner of the image window  ) Again best with a mouse but ....

   

[programmer_ceds]

I'm with Rich2005 on this - I normally use a mouse when I use a laptop (and I'm not a big fan of laptop keyboards either!).

It may not help you as my laptop also has Linux Mint 20 (rather than Windows) but I have just been playing with the touchpad setup and there are two options that work well. I can set the touchpad for two-finger scrolling or edge-scrolling (one finger side to side along the bottom edge of the touchpad for horizontal scrolling or up/down the right-hand edge for vertical scrolling). By default horizontal scrolling wasn't enabled in the touchpad setup utility. If anything edge-scrolling on the touchpad may be better than using the mouse wheel.

I did find that, on the laptop at any rate, I could set the GIMP keyboard shortcuts to assign control-keypad-left to scroll left but it is painfully slow. Configuring the touchpad as noted above gives a much better response.

[eepjr24]

(11-26-2020, 08:31 PM)rich2005 Wrote: You are a hero, using a touchpad. I can not manage without a mouse. 

It's not ideal, but I am huge on keyboard shortcuts so those help a lot. Thanks for trying!

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(11-26-2020, 10:33 PM)programmer_ceds Wrote: It may not help you as my laptop also has Linux Mint 20 (rather than Windows) but I have just been playing with the touchpad setup and there are two options that work well. I can set the touchpad for two-finger scrolling  or edge-scrolling (one finger side to side along the bottom edge of the touchpad for horizontal scrolling or up/down the right-hand edge for vertical scrolling). By default horizontal scrolling wasn't enabled in the touchpad setup utility. If anything edge-scrolling on the touchpad may be better than using the mouse wheel.

No edge scrolling option on my ThinkPad, but the two finger scrolling works! Thanks for the tip, that will save some time.

- E