Re: GNOME 3.2: mapping extra mouse buttons

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

Why cannot current list of shortcuts be used as initial approach to
"actions"? If we provide a way to map, along with the keyboard
combination, some mouse button click (perhaps with kbd modifiers) -
that would be usable solution.

Sergey

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Peter Hutterer
<peter hutterer who-t net> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 01:17:58PM -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
>> 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.)
>
> just because zoom is mentioned here: zoom, rotate and a few other actions
> are actions that are ideally continuous. Rotate isn't just "rotate" but
> "rotate by X degrees". as such, they are difficult to map to pure
> actions unless you also provide the angle, direction, velocity, etc.
>
> an example where we already did it wrong are scroll wheels that are mapped
> to button clicks (though we're working on exporting those as valuators). so
> when considering actions, please don't forget that they may be more complex
> than just a "zoom in" action.
>
> other than that, I thnk the concept of "actions" is a good one, especially
> when looking a bit further ahead with touch gestures and their potential
> mapping to actions.
>
> Cheers,
>  Peter
>
>> 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
>