Sunsetting khotkeys?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 29. März 2016 08:57:28 CEST Martin Graesslin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I want to propose to not release KHotKeys with Plasma 5.7 anymore.
> 
> The reasons are:
> * it's unmaintained (e.g. Ben sent us a mail about failing build)
> * it never got properly ported to Qt5 (xcb port partially missing)
> * many features need to be moved to KWin in order to support it in Wayland
> * UI is extremely complicated
> 
> Of course there are useful features in KHotKeys and removing them will not
> be something some of our users will appreciate. Thus we need to make sure
> we transit properly.
> 
> * starting applications on global shortcuts can be provided directly by
> KGlobalAccel
> * invoking DBus commands directly can be provided by KGlobalAccel
> * setting a global shortcut for an application can be done in KMenuEdit
> * sending fake input or a dbus command is nothing different to starting an
> application
> * window actions can nowadays be done with KWin scripts
> 
> Required actions will be:
> * add support to start applications in KGlobalAccel
> * migrate the existing KHotKey shortcuts to KGlobalAccel without the user
> noticing
> * migrate the dbus command/fake input to shell scripts with a desktop file
> and register them in KGlobalAccel
> * generate kwin scripts from the window actions
> 
> An idea can also be to improve the global shortcuts configuration module to
> make it easier to set global shortcuts from there.
> 
> What do you think?

The VDG agrees that KHotkeys (or rather the "Custom Shortcuts" KCM, which is 
the user-visible part of them) should go. The KCM is one of those "They gave 
me full spaceship controls when all I wanted was a steering wheel" kind of 
things.
Most of those who currently use it, probably use it just for setting shortcuts 
to start applications. Those few who actually do execute dbus calls or fake 
input shell scripts should still be able to do that, but anyone who knows how 
to do such things does not need a GUI for it.

The most tricky bit will be the transition: We need to make sure that users 
know how to do the things that they've done with Custom Shortcuts before.
One idea could be to put in a placeholder for the KCM for one or two releases, 
which would be just a page explaining how to do things now. 
Maybe we can keep it in the code for a while longer, with a config flag (off by 
default) to still show it, for LTS releases which might happen to have skipped 
the Plasma versions that showed it by default.

Also, we would be very happy if the Global Shortcuts KCM could be redesigned 
along with the change, because the current categorization based on which 
binary takes a shortcut is really confusing for users, making it unnecessarily 
difficult to find the shortcut you're looking for.

So, tl;dr: All for, with the necessary precautions.

Cheers,
Thomas