There are many questions and answers here and around the web on setting basic keyboard shortcuts in GNOME. Most of them are either for launching applications, or Compiz settings, or for changing defaults for other things for which Ubuntu provides defaults shortcuts.

What I want to know though is how to refer to a gnome-panel menu item in a custom keyboard shortcut.

I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 with GNOME Classic, and the old GNOME 2 / Ubuntu 10.04 keyboard shortcuts for the main menus (Alt-F1) and the "Me Menu" (Super+S) don't seem to work.

So my question is two-fold. Primarily I'd like to know how to set those shortcuts.

But a second-order question is how I could have found this out myself: is there some program I can use to see what signals or commands are fired off when I click on various things, in this case gnome-panel menu items?

I'm interested in the broader question because I've sometimes wanted to set shortcuts for specific menus or menu items in GNOME 2, so a way to find out what command I need there would be useful. Give a man a rod, as they say :-)

I've had a look at a good lot of keyboard shortcut and menu related items here to no avail. One somewhat relevant question is this one, but it's just a "how do I do it" question, and applies to Unity, not GNOME, although it would be great if whatever investigatory method answers this question might also apply under different desktops, like Unity. The answer to this question is essentially how I was doing it in 10.04 / GNOME 2, although the questioner's query isn't exactly addressed - how to get directly to "Broadcast" with a key combination. Again, it would be great if an answer delving into how such menus work and how they interact with the rest of the system would be applicable to pinpoint menu items.