After about two days of work with trial and error, I finally succeeded. I've create a template to build the tcz package for rdesktop 1.8.3 using tcztools.
http://www.apis.de/pub/anrose00/rdbuild.tar To build it the following steps are required:
rdesktop-get
rdesktop-build
tcz-pack rdesktop
Currently this package is built without Credssp and smart card support. See options for ./configure in rdesktop-build. The strange thing is, that I tried to build it with smard card support (pcsc-lite is being installed). But the ./configure script fails to see it (it complains about pkg-config missing, which is installed too). I did not have the time to solve this. Maybe someone with autoconf knowledge can resolve this.
This must be something new with rdesktop-1.8. When using the same layout with rdesktop-1.7 sources it detects pcsc-lite and can build it without problems.
If someone is interested to test the rdesktop 1.8.3 package:
http://www.apis.de/pub/anrose00/rdesktop.tczhttp://www.apis.de/pub/anrose00/rdesktop.tcz.md5.txtAfter I had installed rdesktop1.8 and tried the windows special keys, I was disappointed because nothing had improved. After building --with-debug-kbd I could see that it fails to map the windows keys to something meaningful.
After some more research I discovered the problem. The key bindings in Xvesa seem to be missing. I verified this on my Suse machine which had the correct bindings by default.
Adding this line to .xsession makes the Windows menu and Windows context menu keys work:
xmodmap -e "clear mod4" -e "keycode 133 = Super_L" -e "add mod4 = Super_L" -e "keycode 134 = Super_R" -e "keycode 135 = Menu NoSymbol Menu"
Perhaps someone can add this as default bindings. Standard keyboards for desktop PC should all use these settings, as far as my tests are concerned.