[Development] Application wide shortcuts API for QML

[Mark]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Alan Alpert <416365416c at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 12:53 AM, Mark <markg85 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Alan' posts about possible future APIs made me want to post this as
>> well. In the QWidget works we have the rather nice QShortcut class to
>> aid us in defining application wide shortcuts.
>>
>> Functionality like that is completely missing from the current QtQuick
>> in both Qt 4.8 (1.1) and 5.0 (2.0). For desktop based applications an
>> API like that would be very much needed since applications need to
>> have the ability to define app wide shortcuts.
>
> Known issue. In fact, someone already started work on this:
> https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,41816

That sounds awesome :) Qt 5.1 material i guess?
>
>> I already made an API for exactly this reason which can be found here [1].
>>
>> The API itself should look somewhat like this:
>>
>> Shortcut {
>>     QKeySequence key
>>     signal activated
>> }
>
> QKeySequence isn't available as a type to QML. Did you mean a string
> property for key, which would be converted to a QKeySequence?

By that i meant that it should have all the functionality that
QKeySequence currently has. What i'm also missing in that
implementation is support for the StandardKey support [1]
>
> It wasn't explained well in the Actions API thread, but the thought
> was that this could be initially exposed with the Actions API. The
> string shortcut property there would be registered as an application
> global shortcut, so you could use Actions separate from any menus to
> do this. What do you think of having it just in the action API, or do
> you think it needs its own item?

If that is:
Item {
    KeyShortcut.shortcut: "ctrl+c"
    KeyShortcut.onTriggered: t.text = "ctrl c pressed"
}

then i find the syntax rather long/complex for something fairly
simple. With that you need multiple Item { ... } to register multiple
application shortcuts so why bother making it look complicated if it
can look nice (and easier) as well. I am in fact using my syntax in my
project which looks like this: (an example with more keys can be seen
here [2]).

Shortcut {
    key: "F5"
    onActivated: {
        console.log(key . " pressed")
    }
}

What i wanted to add was the ability to also do (ability to use the
StandardKey enum. I couldn't get the darn enum to work in QML without
copying it to my class):
Shortcut {
    key: QKeySequence.Refresh
}

and to get mouse shortcuts available
Shortcut {
    key: "CTRL + MOUSE_BUTTON_1"
}

Or perhaps slightly different to really differentiate mouse "buttons"
and keyboard "keys" like so:
Shortcut {
    key: "CTRL" // keyboard key
    button: "MOUSE_BUTTON_1" // mouse button
}

>
>> Obviously if this is going to happen then mouse shortcuts should be
>> included as well. Right now Qt itself has no possibility of defining a
>> shortcut like "CTRL + LEFT MOUSE BUTTON" (or i don't know of it's
>> possibility).
>
> I agree that functionality would be nice to see for shortcuts in Qt.
> But it's probably a separate issue, distinct from exposing the current
> functionality to QML (which is a logical first step).

That.. really depends.
Rick (added to cc) is working on shortcuts that work with keys and
mouse buttons. I don't know exactly how he's going to implement a
single class that can handle both keyboard shortcuts and mouse
shortcuts in a fashion like QKeySequence allows (for example:
QSomeSequence("CTRL + MOUSE_BUTTON_1")) That will have to be
coordinated with him so that the QML Shortcut class (however it's
going to look) won't be outdated as soon as it enters Qt.
>
> --
> Alan Alpert

Cheers,
Mark

[1] http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qkeysequence.html#StandardKey-enum
[2] http://gitorious.org/porpoise/master/blobs/master/qml/Porpoise/AppShortcuts.qml