[Geany-Devel] RFC: Keybindings rewrite

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-06-06 07:17 AM, Thomas Martitz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> based up on Matthew's fine GtkActions branch [1] I think we could
> realistically rewrite keybindings.c use GtkAction/accelerators properly.
>
> Currently it re-implements lots of gtk stuff, such as the actual looping
> through the known keybindings for the callback when a keybinding
> pressed. When this would be rewritten keybindings.c could probably be
> half as large (in LOC terms).
>
> The advantage of doing so would be that plugins could register
> keybindings simply by providing a GtkAction instance (and optionally a
> GtkMenuItem) instead of a plain callback. This would enable to handle
> keybindings in a more natural (from a glib/gtk POV) form through
> signals. This is especially interesting for non-C plugins because it
> easier to support/implement a gobject-based API then a
> function-pointer-based one. This is the major reason I'm interested in
> this.
>

We could alternatively add a GtkActionGroup to each GeanyPlugin(Private) 
structure so plugins could just add in their own actions and not have 
the core even care much. I can imagine something like this:

void plugin_init(GeanyData *unused)
{
   GtkAction *action = gtk_action_new("foo", "Foo", "Does foo", NULL);
   gtk_action_group_add_action(
     plugin_get_action_group(geany_plugin), action);
   GtkMenuItem *item = gtk_action_create_menu_item(action);
   gtk_menu_shell_append(
     GTK_MENU_SHELL(geany_data.main_widgets.tools_menu), item);
   gtk_widget_show(item);
   // etc...
}

The keybindings editor GUI would then be able to know which actions the 
plugin wants managed/edited without requiring any special API functions.

> I think it is possible to do this without breaking the API or at least
> without actual damage because plugins don't use the fields of
> GeanyKeyGroup and GeanyKeyBinding so we can change these structs.
>
> Is such a rewrite desirable, and would it have a realistic chance of
> getting merged? I'm asking because I don't want to spend time on this
> and never get it merged. Otherwise I would volunteer to do this.
>

Calling it a re-write will mostly likely not help :)

Cheers,
Matthew Brush