GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 678460
Tools/manage tools/shortcuts: More help while defining shortcuts
Last modified: 2012-06-23 01:13:20 UTC
I enjoy much the possibility to define my own tools, and combine them with shortcuts. I admit that it wouldn't be wise to redefine the mosts often used ones like Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. However, I often write programs in Scala or Java and like to compile and run them by hotkeys. I have ALT-j (java) and Ctrl-J (javac) defined, and would like to use something for Scala, but Ctrl-S is already used for "Save". The first problem with this is, that it isn't indicated, that the keystroke is occupied by something else, it is even shown in the menu. Since the keys are spread all over the menu, it is hard to find a free one. I thought, that Ctrl-K would be a nice alternative, since K can be pronounced like C in German in many cases, and "kompilieren" would be easy to recognize. It's occupied too for "inKremental search" which I rarely use, and so we approach the 3rd aspect of this problem: If I could define an Image to be shown in the toolbar, or building a button from words like "scalac", "scala", ..., the accessibility would be much better. Conclusion: I have 3 related feature-requests: * inform the user, if a hotkey is occupied * allow the user to overwrite hotkeys (ask for confirmation to avoid accidentally overwriting popular commands, the user didn't think of) * allow the user to define buttons for the toolbar - (by image, by words, by both). Thanks for your help. If you rewrite Gedit from Scratch in Java or Scala, I would submit a patch. :) Btw.: I'm still using Gedit 2.30.3 which came with XUbuntu 10.04, but I consulted the List of changes since then, and found no related entry. This is more a feature request/maybe usability bug.
* Open the Terminal application. * Run the command gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface can-change-accels true (note that this might not yet work in 2.30 as I don't remember when exactly gedit was converted from old gconf to new gsettings) * Start gedit * Hover your mouse cursor over the menu bar item for which you want to add or change the keyboard shortcut. * Type the shortcut that you want on the keyboard. Note that this setting is desktop-wide and that you can disable it again after your changes by using the command gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface can-change-accels false You can also use the dconf-editor application to do this. Does this help?
@André: Thanks very much. On Xubuntu 10.04 gsettings isn't available. apt-cache search gsettings yielded python-changesettings - Python module to change lines in config files as answer, but installing it didn't provide such an app. So I guess it is in a later version. It's a good workaround, but of course not very convenient. However, thanks again - I will soon change to Xubuntu 12.04 and then I can try this workaround. Configurable Menues and Shortcuts with user-defined buttons could perhaps be a general UI-improvement in many applications, managed on an API/Framework-Level.
Considering this solved (INVALID as the functionality already exists). Please reopen if this is still a problem in GNOME 3.4 or 3.2.
@André: I don't think so, because changing the hotkeys via the commandline will only be a way few people might use. And it doesn't adress the question of self defined buttons in the toolbar.
That's intended - Most people won't have the need to change hotkeys. Self-defined buttons in the toolbar also looks like something rather uncommon and would probably require a desktop-wide solution and nothing specific to Gedit.
@André: I would agree that most applications won't profit much from user defined toolbar, but you normally don't have the possibility to load user defined plugins or run user defined macros either. But since Gedit allows macros and encourages producing your owns, and many programmers can use Gedit, to (compile and) run code from different languages by different commands, it would be very useful to have the possibility. It's the opportunity for Gedit to provide something unique. And I assure you, that writing Macros is more sophisticated than combining a macro with a user defined image of size x*x or 2x*2x or a Button text like "run Python, run PHP, run Ruby, comp. C, comp. Java".