Re: GNOME 3.2: mapping extra mouse buttons

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

On Wed, 2011-03-23 at 01:10 +0000, Sergey Udaltsov wrote:

> These days there are many many mice with > 5 buttons (3 + scroll). For
> a moment the only solution for them is not very user-friendly imwheel.
> Would it make sense to provide mapping for those extra buttons? On
> windows, people use them for switching apps, copy/paste, back/forward
> etc. Why cannot we provide comfortable GUI for that configuration?
> Could it be done within keyboard panel - or do we need extra panel (or
> extra tab in the "Mouse" panel)? Should we map "buttons->actions" or
> "buttons->keys" (so shortcuts would be picked automatically)?

Definitely buttons->actions, for the reasons which Peter mentioned.

Right now we don't have a generic way to tell an app (or the focused
window) to "do an action" - there is no central system of verbs.

However, we *do* have GtkActions, and stock names, and such.  It would
be a good exercise to grab a bunch of common actions (copy, paste, etc.)
and to see if they can be mapped to buttons easily.

1. Make a list of stock names which are used in many apps (cut, copy,
paste, zoom in, etc.)

2. Figure out a way to locate the things created by a GtkUIManager.
This may involve adding something like gtk_window_list_actions().  Talk
to the GTK+ people about this.

3. Once you have the things from (2), you can get their respective
GtkActions and invoke them once you get a button event.

This glosses over a *lot* of detail, but it's a start :)

  Federico