I wanted to use the extra buttons and "flag" keys on my Logitech keyboard, and I successfully wrote a script to run at bootup which used xmodmap to define them as F13-F23.
The problem is with assigning activities to them. I tried the menu item System-Preferences-Keyboard shortcuts and also Metacity from Gnome Configuration. These both work (provided you don't define the same thing with both) but only when they are first set up. After a re-boot, Gnome has forgotten the assignments even though they are still listed as in force.
Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution?
I'm using Gnome 2.14.0 and Fedora Core 5.

Xbindkeys works very nicely for me with Gnome.

It's odd that Gnome "forgets" the keybindings after a reboot - for some things (like changing volume, which Gnome knows about), I found it easier to bind the keys using the "Keyboard Shortcuts" applet and they stay put once they're set.

If anyone comes to this query with the same question, here is the definitive answer!

Gnome sets itself up, including the keyboard shortcuts, before running the user's start-up scripts. In other words, it can't follow the instruction to use F20 to launch Firefox because it doesn't know that such a key exists until it's run the script.

The idea that the extra keys need naming (e.g. as F13 &c), which I got from a previous post, is wrong. Just pressing the key will insert its scan code into the shortcut: e.g. key 230 is automatically entered as 0xe6.

For using xbindkeys to launch a program from a keypress when the desktop doesn't include that option, the same key would be called c:230. e.g.

"openoffice.org-2.0 -writer"
c:230