Shortcuts for Pointer Devices in KDE (was: KAction and KShortcut in frameworks)

[Rick Stockton]

On Mon, 14 May 2012 13:59:43 +0200, todd rme <toddrme2178 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  It sounds like this is being limited to just mouse and keyboard
>  shortcuts.  Is there a reason this can't be made more general, so
>  other devices can provide shortcuts as well?  Currently we have a
>  variety of devices with their own unique button and action-handling
>  systems.  Being able to provide a plugin-based system that anyone can
>  write an additional backend for would allow us to unify these
>  interfaces.

-Todd

Todd, we _could_ attempt other devices at the same time. But these other devices must be analogous to a keypad-like "keyboard" (although they'd be much easier to support than THE keyboard, because there aren't i10n and layout issues). The Best example is a TV remote control. Creating lower-level Classes for those devices is simply copy-paste-rename-simplify from the keyboard Classes. But I don't see a lot of Bugzilla Votes such support.

For mice, at the Qt level, I'm intending to provide unique back-end classes (QMouseSequence, QMouseShortcutMap ...). These "Sequences" and Map" can result in some of the same Action as keyboard-only shortcuts, or they can perform new ones. many or all of thesmexecute the same Actions. I still need to look, play and think about possible re-factoring within the "higher" Classes (e.g., QShortcut itself).

Please remember that we can NOT support another Device with location coordinates and "automatic" context! Devices which behave as a mouse, with location and scrolling  (e.g., a JoyStick, a game console Remote, etc.) cannot be done in Qt5. Qt is built with the assumption of just one Pointer context, it would require multiple person-years of effort, and huge API changes, to support multiple pointer contexts on Widgets. (QML is probably easy to implement, via overlapping "MouseArea" Elements. It might even be possible to add into Qt5.x as a feature, without breaking BC, using the kind of API trickery which we did in adding Global Coordinates into QMouseEvent signatures. Otherwise, it's a Qt6 item.)

I own a Joystick, and I modified Qt to use it as an alternate mouse device. Movements are slower and much less accurate than mouse movements; it's a strain to "drive" or "fly" for long periods; and it's a strain to reach some of the buttons down on the "hat". In Qt, you can pretty easily have either the Joystick or Mouse, but not both. And mice are far more ergonomic general-purpose Pointer devices.

In any event, the fundamental need (with thousands of bug votes) is for mouse-button-based shortcuts. That can go into Qt 5.1, supporting both Widgets and QML MouseAreas, so I'll do that first. Support of Remote control devices remotes, if we do them at all, becomes a question of priority. And, IMO, it's contending at a much lower level of Awesomeness.