Re: Global keybindings in GNOME (was: Tomboy in Desktop)

["Matthias Clasen" <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On 8/6/06, Nigel Tao <nigel tao gnome gmail com> wrote:
> > Deskbar-applet has this aswell (same code). I think GNOME needs some API
> > for registering global keybindings. IIRC someone did some work on
> > providing an actual UI for user defined keybindings (instead of the
> > current mess with gconf). Isn't it logical to give apps a way to hook in
> > to this aswell?
>
> Yeah, I think that a generic keybinding API would be useful.  I
> remember collecting a list of keybinding bugs somewhere due to the
> fact that there's a bunch of duplicated code that's slightly
> different.  Things like <Super>space works as a keybinding for Open
> Terminal (handled by gnome-control-center???) but doesn't work for
> metacity's run-custom-command thingies (or vice versa??).  I suppose I
> could dig up the bugzilla IDs, hang on...
>
> Would it make sense to have a single D-Bus service where tomboy,
> deskbar, metacity, etc. (and don't forget our KDE friends) can just
> say "notify me on <Alt>F12", or is that just total crack and should we
> just have a traditionally linked libkeybinder instead?

I had envisioned that this could be implemented by having apps install
small xml files in a well-known place
which contain a translated name/description of an
action they want to make available via a global keybinding, plus a
command to run in that case.

Of course, bringing in D-Bus and other gizmos would crank up the
coolness factor...

Matthias