[Geany-Devel] 'shiftcolumn' plugin - keyboard shortcut conflict

Matthew Brush mbrush at xxxxx
Tue Mar 25 23:45:53 UTC 2014


On 14-03-25 04:19 PM, Shankhoneer Chakrovarty wrote:
> Thanks Lex.
>
> It is actually preferable that plugins do not have default keybindings.
>>
>> It is not known what combination plugins will be loaded and so it is
>> not known what combination of keybindings might clash, and it is not
>> known what keybindings a user might define themselves that can clash.
>>
>> So I would recommend that default keybindings be removed from plugins.
>>
>
> I understand, I would remove the default keybindings. The problem is this
> plugin doesnt have its own preference page in the Plugin Manager window.
> Activating this plugin will mean the user has to go to Edit->Preference
> (not the Plugin preferences)->Keybindings to set the keybindings for this
> plugin which is a lot of clicks. What I would suggest is that plugin should
> have its own preference page and a way to tell the user how to set the
> keybindings and the recommended keys. One of the ways could be putting all
> those things in plugin description. What do you think?
>

I think this is the normal way though, I don't think (m)any plugins 
provide own keybindings preferences outside of the main one. There was a 
fairly recent commit which added a "Keybindings" button into the Plugin 
Manager dialog that jumps directly to the keybindings group for the 
selected plugin. IMO, this is not too hard.

I agree that the plugin could/should tell the user how to configure/use 
it though, either in the README file or wherever. In the case of Shift 
Column plugin, I think the README file should be more explicit about 
what the plugin actually does. When I tried it the other day, I had no 
clue what it should do as "move blocks of text horizontally" could mean 
several different things, and the most obvious one is built into the 
editor already just using the Tab/ShiftTab keybindings (to indent/dedent).

If you're looking to get started contributing to Geany-Plugins, a couple 
simple things could be to make two separate pull requests on github, one 
to replace the default Shift Column keybindings with 0s (no default 
binding), and then a separate pull request to improve its README/docs.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush



More information about the Devel mailing list