Notices

Well this might be a little bit difficult but i have the following problem: normally when going to work i read a nice ebook on my nit using fbreader and in the background there is a musicplayer running so i can listen to music. Sometimes i want to jump over a track and then i must switch to the musicplayer jump to next track and switch back to fbreader. this is a little annoying as you can imagin. on my ipaq every musicplayer could bound some hardware keys so that i can use them to switch to next song without switching from the ebookreader. Is there any application for os2008 to support something like this? Is there an easy way to achieve this with a script maybe over dbus commands to the musicplayer or something?

I know this is no really important problem but i wonder if someone had the same problem and maybe a solution for it

While it's not exactly "easy" and probably not what you're looking for - I've been doing exactly what you want to do on my N810 almost every day for months.

I use KDE as my desktop environment (instead of Maemo) and in KDE you can map out hotkeys (aka: Input Actions in KDE Control Center) for pretty much anything you can imagine. I've mapped out hotkeys for Next, Previous, Volume +/- and Play/Pause commands in XMMS. That way while I'm reading in FBReader or KPDF or surfing the net - and I want to control the music in the background I just tap a couple of keys and voila!

BTW, when I say that it's not exactly easy - I mean that installing KDE and setting everything up can take a bit of time and effort but IMHO, it's more than worth it.

You can use Powerlaunch to control all sorts of things via the N8x0 hardware buttons.

Maybe what you want to do is also possible with powerlaunch. There is a similar usecase mentioned on the powerlaunch homepage:
"I use powerlaunch for a pocket music mode where I press a set of hardware keys and it turns off and locks the screen only. The keys can then be used to control music/volume while the device is in my pocket. This also works great for playing music while driving without requiring looking at the device."
http://powerlaunch.garage.maemo.org/

Unfortunately Powerlaunch is a little bit difficult to configure. So I have no idea how this can be done.

Thanks for the response. How much extra space will kde take? I will try powerlaunch first as i prefer windowmaker/xfce or even gnome over kde on my laptop

sometimes, i have the same problem (i usually do not skip songs, i'd rather need volume control for canola, while in fbreader), however switching apps is quite easy, fortunately.