Keyboard buttons event-based or device based?

[Crypto]

Hi,

I am not sure if this is related to xorg, maybe it is related to KDE, Gnome 
etc.

I often connect an external USB keyboard to my notebook for faster typing.

In KDE etc. (i.e. GUI) applications it is often possible to re-assign keyboard 
events to particular menu entries of that application so that one gets new 
keyboard shortcuts.

It seems to me that these entries are "event-based" - the application receives 
e.g. "CTRL+c" and will copy selected text etc. to clipboard. But can the 
application also tell which device has sent the command? If it does not then I 
could attach six USB keyboards to my notebook which all would enter the same 
commands and I would not get any more options for assigning keyboard 
shortcuts.

Instead in my example it would be like "internal notebook keyboard" + "CTRL+c" 
or "external keyboard" + "CTRL+c", which I call "device-based". Although in 
both cases I entered the same key sequence I would get more keyboard shortcuts 
because in this case the device also would be taken into account.

By using a device-based assignment of shortcuts one could get more 
alternatives for the shortcuts. One could have an external numblock that could 
send "open browser", "run office program" etc. whereas the standard keyboard 
sends the numbers 0 to 9 on its numblock. But in both cases only the numblock 
number keys were pressed.

What do you think?

Thanks for any hint and kind regards,
Crypto.