[Geany-Devel] RFC: Keybindings rewrite

[Lex Trotman]

On 7 June 2014 10:32, Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
> 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.

And as Matthew explained on IRC this would allow Geany to destroy the
action group(s) associated with the plugin when the plugin is
unloaded, thus destroying the actions, so no leaks :)

The general idea looks ok to me.

Cheers
Lex

>
>
>> 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
>
>
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