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

[David nolden]

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:
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.
  - 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.

- When you have a quickopen- or code-completion list open:
 - As soon as you press ALT, the current item is expanded and an embedded 
navigation-widget shown, that can be navigated using arrow keys. As soon as 
you release ALT, it is unexpanded again. (This is very confenient, since it 
allows peeking into the items with very few key-presses)
- If you press+release ALT fast, then the expansion of the item is toggled, so 
it's possible to expand multiple at the same time.
 
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.

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.

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

Greetings, David