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In my Linux setup, Emacs has the Edit->Copy menu item mapped to -- what key is that? And where does it get that keyname definition from? Is that internal to emacs? Or does it get that further upstream?

Specifically, I am running Gnome under Ubuntu Lucid (10.04LTS) - but I believe this is a far more generic question.

Is it, perhaps, that it is mapped to non-existant keys on a standard keyboard? (I recall earlier Sun keyboards having such keys.)

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Yes, it's a standard X11 keysym for which there are no equivalents on a 105-key PC keyboard. Sun and various other workstation keyboards had such keys, and you can find them on some multimedia PC keyboards.

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How do I remap/bind Emacs' "<copy>" to some other shortcut, like W-c for example? –  SabreWolfy Apr 4 '12 at 9:10
You could do it inside of Emacs by finding out the function it's running (in the Emacs I have in front of me, it's ns-copy-including-secondary) and binding that to a key, or you can bind the X11 Copy keysym to a physical key using xmodmap. (Note that xmodmap cannot bind a keysym to a specific modifier+keysym sequence, though, with the exception of Mode_switch and Shift modifiers — with some caveats, in particular that the Shift modifier tends to mean "extend the selection" and few X11 programs are smart enough to figure out that you put Copy itself on a Shift modifier.) –  geekosaur Apr 4 '12 at 23:13
I misunderstood. When I enter M-x clipboard-yank Emacs tells me I can just use <paste> and likewise when I enter clipboard-kill-ring-save it says I can just use <copy>. I can't remap those keys because I don't have those keys. I can remap the functions they run to other keys. –  SabreWolfy Apr 5 '12 at 12:29
Ok, so you're looking for xmodmap. But, as I said, you need physical keys to bind it to; keysyms map to physical keys, not to logical keys with modifiers. So on a standard 105-key keyboard you would need to rebind keys like Menu, or on an exended keyboard you can use xev to find out the keycodes used by the added keys and then rebind those. –  geekosaur Apr 5 '12 at 19:54

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