Focus conflicts with Space as playcontrol

[Tim Janik <timj gnu org>]

Hey Stafen,

I've been looking into supporting 'Space' for playback start/stop in ebeast.
The main issue I run into is that it conflicts with other editing and navigation.

Now hotkey processing for Space or unmodified letters can be implemented so that
it doesn't interfere with text field editing. As long as you change the name of
a component, you simply can't use 'P' to start playback or Space to stop
playback. But where it really breaks down is focus handling. Basically a window
that uses Space (or Enter) as hotkeys is fundamentally incompatible with focus
based keyboard navigation as Space is used to activate the currently focussed
widget (could be a button or a list item or anything else).

Now focussing is really something I don't want to give up on, keyboard handling
can be a lot more efficient than mousing, touchscreen handling or mouse pad
navigation. For instance think about navigating through a list of
files/instruments with the cursor keys, focus is needed for that.

I'd appreciate to hear ideas for this problem, do all other trackers/programs
that use Spacebar as playback hotkey completely forego the focus concept?


-- 
Yours sincerely,
Tim Janik

https://testbit.eu/timj/
Free software author.