[apaku at gmx.de: Re: KDE/kdevplatform/plugins/contextbrowser]

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 24.01.09 11:13:06, David nolden wrote:
> Am Samstag 24 Januar 2009 02:26:06 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> > Hmm, maybe I'm missing something but isn't the shortcut to reach the
> > menu "press Alt+release Alt"? I can't see kdevelop doing anything when I
> > press that shortcut. The only thing that works wrt. Alt is pressing it
> > and then using the mouse as kdevelop switches into the browser mode.
> >
> > If I got the above right then there shouldn't be any problem at all, we
> > just need to ignore the press+release if there's not been a mouse-click
> > in between and the time between both press+release is short
> > (how short should be configurable, but maybe we can use the double-click
> > timeout). How does that sound?
> >
> > BTW: KDevelop would not be the first KDE4 app to not support pressing
> > "Alt" to jump to the menu. konsole doesn't support that either. It
> > doesn't even support Alt+F to open the file menu.
> 
> Ok so since noone here seems to have read my blog about the magic modifier, 
> here a short roundup:

In fact I didn't :)

> It allows you to access the semantic information behind the code by keyboard, 
> using a navigation-widget, like this:
> - When you're in the editor:
>   - When you press ALT, and the code-browser is not visible, then a 
> navigation-tooltip will pop up after a timeout, that can be navigated using 
> the arrows keys. It disappears as soon as you release ALT.

I could swear that didn't happen yesterday ;)

>   - When you're within the editor and the code-browser is visible, then no 
> navigation-tooltip will pop up, rather you'll be able to navigate within the 
> code-browser using ALT+arrows.

I noticed that.

> - When you have a quickopen- or code-completion list open:

Those two are no-brainers because you've got a dialog open anyway, so
there's no way to open the menu here.

> All together this is very convenient, since it allows using the exact same 
> keyboard methods within all contexts to navigate the semantic information. I 
> use it all the time and it's a killer feature to me.

I agree that this is very useful and extremely consistent (in fact I
think its the most consistent thing in the whole app). 

> Now after thinking about it, I think the menu shortcut should be completely 
> disabled as long as ALT is the magic modifier, else you will end up 
> accidentally in the menu again and again, for example if you release ALT 
> before the popup timeout is over just because you've changed your mind.

Indeed.
 
> Rather the key should become configurable. Meta would be another good key for 
> this purpose.

I've filed a wishlist report for this (hope language component in
kdevplatform is ok). I suspect this can't be put in the shortcuts
editor, as that one doesn't allow single-key-clicks like "Meta", right?

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181731

Andreas

-- 
You enjoy the company of other people.