Xfce Shortcut Manager

[Erik Harrison]

On 7/18/05, Ori Bernstein <rand_chars at rogers.com> wrote:
> Today, I was thinking a bit about the state of shortcut management in Xfce - it
> seems like the most common feature request for xfwm4 is more shortcuts, and it
> seems like the consensus is that the way to go is getting a general shortcut
> manager.
> 
> I'd like to propose a few changes to the architecture of xfwm4 to allow this to
> happen and to work nicely, along with providing some nice side effects.
> 
> The problems as I see them:
>  - Adding general shortcut management to xfwm4 would add bloat.
>  - Reducing the scope of xfwm4's shortcut management to only window shortcuts
>    and adding a separate shortcut manager leaves the user with two places to
>    configure shortcuts. IMO, that's very bad interface design.

I'm honestly not sure about that. There are already dozens of places
to configure your keyboard shortcuts - one for every application that
has configurable shortcuts.

On the other hand, WM shortcuts are not obviously tied to an
application, and we already shoehorn them into the same place UI wise
now, and no one seems to complain.


> 
> My proposed solution:
>  - Remove shortcuts of any sort from xfwm4. This includes window management
>    shortcuts. Instead, let xfwm4 listen to events on some sort of interface,
>    probably a socket, and be controlled by a "remote control" program of some
>    sort. This program would be invoked by a general shortcut manager.
> 
> Example of how it would work:
>  - you press "alt-leftarrow" to move windows between desktops. the shortcut
>    manager launches 'xfwm4-remote -c"window-move-left"', which signals xfwm4 to
>    move the window left.
> 
> Cool side effects:
>  - Xfwm4 becomes scriptable. It doesn't seem too far-fetched to me to be able
>    to end up with a small shellscript like this to search for a lost window:
>    "xfwm4-remote -c"focus" "$(xfwm4-remote -c"list-windows" | grep $TITLE)"
> 
>    I'm sure people here can come up with cooler things.
> 
> So, what does everyone think? Am I stoned? or might this crazy idea actually
> work?
> 
> I'd need help on the xfwm4 side of things to split out the shortcuts, I
> think, but I'd definitely be willing to work on writing a shortcut manager.
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-- 
"This brings me back to a time where I had no worries. 
All I needed to do was watch Perfect Strangers."
-Erik