Popular Keyboard shortcuts (Was: RFC: KDE4, KMix and a public Mixer API)

[Christian Esken]

Am Montag, 9. Oktober 2006 10:43 schrieb Lubos Lunak:
> On Sunday 08 October 2006 20:03, Christian Esken wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am currently working on a Mixer Service API for KDE4.
> > The API is targeted at mixer services (like kmixd), a Mixer (like kmix) and
> > several MM apps. It can be used for changing volumes, retrieving volume
> > changes, querying for mixers, detecting hot-plugged soundcards/mixers and
> > some more services.
> ...
> > (for example I would like to add keyboard shortcut management, as currently
> > 3-n applications fight e.g. for the XF86AudioRaiseVolume shortcut).
> 
>  To make sure that there will be yet one more application to fight for it? The 

OK, actually this is a generic issue. There are some very popular Keyboard shortcuts. Popular in the sense that many applications would like to hold this global shortcut:
XF86AudioRaiseVolume 
XF86AudioLowerVolume 
XF86AudioMute
XF86AudioPlay
XF86AudioStop
XF86AudioNext
XF86AudioPrev

Problem 1) KKeydialog lets you assign a global shortcut that is already taken by another application (obviously it doesn't work, but the user won't get a warning). So the user assigns the "XF86AudioPlay" in his new shiny MM Application and curses that they don't work - first impression is ruined.

> mixer itself has the ability to handle shortcuts and it seems like the right 

Problem 2) And if a user runs the KMix PanelApplet instead of the Mixer?

>  Of course, there are the stupid laptop multimedia keys that don't work like 
> normal keys and need special handling, and there's KMilo which instead of 
> doing the conversion tries to handle them in hackish ways, but even then I 

Problem 3) KMilo is also taking away regular keys like XF86AudioRaiseVolume.

So we see that we actually have an issue. It cannot be discussed away.
If there is no generic solution, I will do a special solution for KMix, MixerApllet and KMilo.

  Christian

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