Found this pull request about the same issue: #20
Two problmes:

• need to press ctrl-alt-L/R twice to change workspace
• up/down cursor keys don't work anymore

If you post a reasonable bounty, I'll do it for half of what I normally bill. The easier/cheaper work around is to dig into the Xorg/X11 files, and design an alternate keyboard schema as a work around. It's doc'd here: http://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.html#sect7.

Or even easier, https://github.com/rdesktop/rdesktop/blob/master/keymaps/en-us go there and make it so it so that key combination isn't hooked by the app.

Generally, if you're a homerow user, The C-a-<L,R> movement makes you get off your wrists and it ruins the whole flow. If you're a vimmer, hjkl will be second nature - map Windows-key + h,l or jk to navigate left/right through your workspaces.

How much is 'reasonable'? :)

I want to try with keymaps/en-us... but what's the keyword to prevent grabbing?
Thanks for the homerow hint... it's probably better - I'll try it.

Correction to my comment about pull request #20 (the patch in http://www.artificialworlds.net/blog/2011/07/). It works - you have to press ctrl-alt-arrow twice. The first time it ungrabs the keyboard, the next one is sent to the window manager and results in a change of desktop.

The problem was that I was copying the rdeskop binary to /usr/local/bin without doing a make install - this way rdesktop was not able to find the keymap files so the cursor keys (among other things) were not working. I was wrongly attributing the problem to #20 - sorry for that.

As regards a real fix. I must agree with what's written in the blog above - that there is no way to resend the keys back to X... maybe it could be possible to resend the key events to the window manager with XSendEvent() after ungrab - though from reading it seems that most applications ignore such events.

xornand: I found no way to inhibit ctrl-alt-arrow using keymaps.

I would want to solve this issue on a another level, where a user can get out of the keyboard grab but also handle hotkeys in the rdesktop application such as toggle full screen mode.

One way to do this which is pretty nice is the approach vmware is doing this:

• A hotkey MOD is selected by the user, any combination of (SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, WINKEY), default is CTRL + ALT.
• If MOD is press and release, ungrab the keyboard and let all keys go to local desktop, grab is given back to rdesktop by clicking in the window.
• MOD + KEY is grabbed as a rdesktop hotkey such as CTRL+ALT+ENTER, consume it and do proper action or just throw if unbound. This does not change the grab / ungrab state of window.

The modifier should be configurable on command line to override a decent default such as CTRL+ALT. This would not change CTRL+ALT+ENTER which is handled today. for example.

Here follows a few usage examples where selected modifier is CTRL+ALT:

• Switch to full screen (rdesktop hotkey), CTRL + ALT + ENTER
• Switch to next local desktop, CTRL + ALT, CTRL + ALT + DOWN
• Tab through local desktop applications, CTRL + ALT, ALT + TAB

Sounds perfect to me.

Double-typing Control+Alt doesn't allow me access to the window manager with the keyboard.
I have rdesktop 1.8.3 and have not specified -K.
Do I have the wrong version, or is there any documentation or SHA where I can read more about
how to make this work?

Hi!
AFAIK this feature is not implemented yet.
Sorry, but you have to wait a little bit longer:)

Hi! I missread it. Ok, holding my thumbs for the fix. Thanks.

Hi! I see the PR is still open. Any chance this will be completed soon? Really looking forward to this feature 🙂