Hotkey

In addtion to providing a numeric keypad in common with other laptops the Fn key also acts as a hotkey allowing the user to enable or disable certain features of the computer. These are:

• Instant security
• Battery Save mode
• Resume/Boot mode
• Alarm Volume
• Display Selection

These still work under Linux, but where as under MS-DOS or Windows you get a popup display indicating what mode you are in, which changes as you change the configuration, in Linux you have to rely on guess work.

I have written a small utility called hotkey that will pop up a small window in the centre of the screen under X11, when you use the Fn key to change the battery save mode, the power-up mode or the alarm volume. The utility is similar to the functionality provided under Microsoft Windows®. The program only uses X lib, to minimize the amount of RAM used by not requiring unecessary toolkits.

Unlike the facility provided under Microsoft Windows® the on-screen display on my version has been localisied to support German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Japanese in addition to English. If you send me the translations I will be happy to add support for additional languages.

The current version can be made to support all Toshiba laptops other than the Libretto's. If hotkey does not work on your laptop please follow the instructions in README.hotkey on how to add support for your laptop, and please send me the information so that I can add support for your model to future versions of the utilities.