GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 602526
Implement a desktop-wide setting to toggle caret navigation in non-editable text widgets
Last modified: 2016-03-05 03:47:09 UTC
This thread already explains what is needed more elegantly than I would. :-) http://www.mail-archive.com/desktop-devel-list@gnome.org/msg17531.html On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 14:48 -0400, Willie Walker wrote: > Thanks Shaun! > > > Epiphany and Evolution also both respond to F7 to enable > > caret navigation. (And, by the way, though Yelp stores > > this in GConf, it also responds to F7.) We're seeing > > more and more applications use an HTML renderer for core > > parts of their interfaces, such as Gwibber, and Empathy > > with the Adium theme. > > > > I also wonder if non-editable GtkTextView widgets should > > be doing something here. > > It's definitely something that is becoming more common, and I think you > either want it or not versus turning it on in one application and > disabling it in another. > > > If we had a desktop-wide setting (possibly propagated by > > an xsetting), then GTK+/Gecko/WebKit/etc could just pick > > it up and do the right thing, without any extra work from > > application developers. > > The XSetting notion is interesting. Which component would we file and > RFE for to get this? gnome-settings-daemon? Well, a few places. We'd probably want to add something here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/XSettingsRegistry Then, I suppose there should be a GtkSettings property: http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/GtkSettings.html And then, yes, gnome-settings-daemon would be responsible for watching GConf (or whatever) and settings the XSetting. -- Shaun
GtkTextView uses F7 as the binding for toggle-cursor-visible, which is very roughly equivalent to 'caret mode'. But I am not sure that it is really right to toggle that desktop-wide.
While there are undoubtedly exceptions, users who need to enable a caret in a GtkTextView in order to access its contents, will likely need to enable a caret in other read-only text widgets (and WebKitGtk, which is what prompted my filing these bugs) in order to access their content. I don't see how having such a setting can hurt (thought I could easily be wrong). And I do see how it can help. I'm interested in knowing more about your thoughts on why doing this might not be such a good idea.