Here's another piece of the "use IT without touchscreen" puzzle:

WARNING: playing with system components makes it easy to prevent system boot. When working on this I frequently had system boot to white screen instead of the desktop, but sshing into the system was still possible and returning to a known working hildon-desktop.launch always solved the problem.

To install, run as root:

apt-get install dbus-scripts python2.5-dbus python2.5-gnome python2.5-gtk2 python2.5-hildon python2.5-osso wget
wget http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/hd_key.tgz
mv /usr/bin/hildon-desktop.launch /usr/bin/hildon-desktop.launch.orig
tar xzf hd_key.tgz -C /

Then reboot.

Use: when window list is displayed, after pressing home key, pressing a key produces an action:

full screen key - mute sound
zoom +/- - volume +/-
C - run control panel
c - run galculator (if installed)
d - run /usr/local/sbin/disconnect
f - run FBReader
i - open a browser window with new posts on ITT
m - run claws-mail
o - run script /usr/local/sbin/connect.orange
t - run tear
x - run xterm

Currently it is only configurable by editing the python file
/usr/local/bin/hd-keys.py

I chose this method, since almost all keys are ignored when the windows list is displayed, so using the home key as "launch key" does not conflict with anything.

On the N800 this is obviously less useful, as there are only 4 unused keys - fullscreen, zoom+/- and menu.

The change in hildon-desktop (patch here: http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/hd_keys.patch ) only advertises keys pressed while window list is displayed on d-bus, and the rest is done by dbus-scripts.

Known issues:
* does not work until at least one window is open.
* If an app is already running, it is not brought to front when its key is presses.