Arbitrary key assignment interface program?

[Saist]

Hiya.. I'm not on the X.org mailing list...joined mostly to post this
message, which actually originally went to Greg Kroah-Hartman first who
suggested posting it to the X.org mailing list.

just wondering, but has anybody brought up drivers for the Ideazon keyboards
before?  ( http://www.ideazon.com/us/ ) I have a couple of the merc
keyboards, and for the life of me, I can't get the extended keypad to work
under Linux.

actually, what I'd like... and this might be something some of the coders
that volunteered to write drivers might be interested in... is an interface
program that can re-assign keys arbitrarily... and maybe not just keyboard
keys, but mouse button presses as well... what I'd like is a program that if
I have like a 9 button mouse, I can open the interface program up and just
tell the system that the middle button left tilt is equivalent to a *q*, and
the right tilt is equivalent to an *e*, and then presto... inside of a game
like Doom3, I can use the left and right tilt as the q and e buttons to
switch weapons...  or I could just set the left and right tilts to be
registered as left and right tilts, as their own interface commands.

I would think that at a generic enough level on key assignments and device
functions, keyboards like the Ideazon merc could be *fully* supported,
without having to know the device specifics... simply hit an undefined key
on the Merc, and then re-assign a different keystroke to it. For keyboards
like the merc, where the extended keypad is basically the WASD pad copied
and set an angle (Wolf King also makes a similar keyboard), setup could just
be a few button pushes away...

***

What I don't know is whether or not such an interface program could be
designed under Linux to begin with... X.org documentation confuses the
living daylights out of me, so I don't really know if the X.org input system
could support arbitrary key re-assignments and assignments to begin with...

then there's the mess of integrating an interface program with a GUI
front... I can just see versions built for XFCE, KDE, Gnome, IceWM, and so
on and so forth to accommodate existing desktop interface shortcuts... and
somehow, I don't think that would qualify as fun to do...

***

After sending this I started thinking more about a possible structure for
such an interface program. Again, I'm not a coder so I'm not sure... if this
is possible... but what if an interface program could be designed to list
basic functions (keyboard 101-104 support / mouse support)... but then
feature a plugin model to extend functionality.. such as a KDE plugin that
offers known interface shortcuts for existing KDE programs.

Possible? or just... I dunno.. would it require a complete rethink on the
structure of X.org, like Wayland?
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