Using "Window" (Super_L) key as escape in GNU Screen

Question

I've been trying to map the Windows key (to the left of the space bar) to be the escape key in GNU Screen (as opposed to ^A) with no luck. xev gives me that it generates keycode 133 and its keysym is "Super_L" so its definitely recognized by the system, but I don't know what I can write in my .screenrc to be able to use it as an escape key. I've tried googling how to do it, but the solution another person found didn't work for me (use xmodmap to map keycode 133 to something else - like F13, and then get the literal value in vim by pressing ctrl+v and the key (it generated ^[[3~ or something similar) and then putting that in the .screenrc file).
Has anyone else solved this?

Answer 1

I believe you can use the xmodmap method, although it may cause you some problems.  Try this:
$ xmodmap -e "keycode 133 = F19"
then put the following line in your .screenrc:
bindkey -k F9 command
Note the difference between using 'F19' for xmodmap and using 'F9' in the bindkey command.  This is due to bindkey using the termcap database for specifing keys.  The main problem here, as far as I can tell, is that the termcap database doesn't have any notion of the "Super_L" or "Super_R" keys, thus you have to do this strange xmodmap assignment of keycode 133 to some key that bindkey can recognize.  This will work even if your keyboard doesn't have an F19 key as my example shows.  Of course, you don't have to use function key F19; you can use any key on your keyboard.  The important thing to remember is that the bindkey command in your .screenrc file uses the termcap database (see man termcap) to determine what key to use, and the xmodmap command uses some other mechanism. You have to understand how to specify the keys for each case.
Other possibilities:
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 =  F1"  <==>  bindkey -k k1 command
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 =  F2"  <==>  bindkey -k k2 command
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 =  F3"  <==>  bindkey -k k3 command
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 =  F9"  <==>  bindkey -k k9 command
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 = F10"  <==>  bindkey -k k; command
xmodmap -e "keycode 133 = F11"  <==>  bindkey -k F1 command
etc.
This could cause a problem if some other application you use (like your window manager or desktop environment) uses 'Super_L' for something.  I really don't understand exactly how all this works so I don't know how you could fix a conflict like that.
Finally, when you remap 'keycode 133' to some other key, then pressing that key will now generate some character. Pressing the windows key when not in screen, at least on my system, caused a '~' to be printed.  I don't know how you would get rid of this.