Changing keybindings and mouse bindings

Hi Folks,
        We're thinking up more and more uses for abiwidget. As we do it
becomes clear that we need to able to change the key and mouse
bindings for different uses of abiwidget. Write may need to change
them for OLPC. Marc is developing an abiwidget based coding
activity for OLPC. I'm think of making a simple presentation
program with abiwidget.

Our current mouse and keybindings are pretty close to optimal for a word
processor but really need to be changed for these other tasks.

As always the abi code base is flexible enough to make changing
keybindings rather straight forward, we just need to work out a nice API
to do it.

The key and mouse bindings are defined in the class:

EV_EditBindingMap
{
public:
        EV_EditBindingMap(EV_EditMethodContainer * pemc);
        ~EV_EditBindingMap();

        EV_EditBinding * findEditBinding(EV_EditBits eb);
        bool setBinding(EV_EditBits eb, const char * szMethodName);
        bool setBinding(EV_EditBits eb, EV_EditBinding * peb);
        bool removeBinding(EV_EditBits eb);
        bool parseEditBinding(void);

        const char * getShortcutFor(const EV_EditMethod * pEM) const;

protected:
        EV_EditMethodContainer * m_pemc;

        ev_EB_MouseTable * m_pebMT[EV_COUNT_EMB];
        ev_EB_NVK_Table * m_pebNVK;
        ev_EB_Char_Table * m_pebChar;
}

located in the file src/af/ev/ev_EditBinding.cpp

We access this via:

EV_EditBindingMap * XAP_App::getBindingMap(const char * szName);

Different keybinding maps can be created on the fly, given names and
loadeded using..

virtual UT_sint32 XAP_App::setInputMode(const char * szName);
and the XAP_InputModes class

in src/af/xap/xp/xap_InputModes.(h/cpp)

I propose that we implement a new method:

EV_EditBindingMap::createBindingMap(const char * szMapDescription)

Where szMapDescription is an ascii represention of a mouse and key bindmap
similar to src/wp/ap/xp/ap_LB_Default.cpp.

With this method we can write new methods abiWidget.

AbiWidget::createBindings(const char * szName, char * szDescription)
AbiWidget::setBindings(const char * szName)

Which create new key binding sets as needed and then implement then.

This is exactly what I need for the simple presentation program where the
bindings will change in slide show mode (full screen). I believe this will
also be usefule for OLPC Write and Develop.

Suggestions for implementations of the exact format of ascii
representations plus comments and feedback on these ideas are welcomed!

Cheers

Martin
Received on Fri Apr 6 02:54:41 2007