Re: GUI keyboard shortcuts

[Thorsten Liebig]

Am 10.10.2013 23:13, schrieb Torsten:
> On 10.10.2013 22:32, Thorsten Liebig wrote:
>> Am 10.10.2013 22:20, schrieb Thorsten Liebig:
>>> Am 10.10.2013 22:07, schrieb John W. Eaton:
>>>> On 10/10/2013 03:43 PM, Thorsten Liebig wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> the release is close and I think it is now or never we should discuss
>>>>> the keyboard shortcuts for the Octave GUI.
>>>>>
>>>>> As I understand we want to try to get Matlab users to feel at home with
>>>>> the new Octave GUI and to me the proper keyboard-shortcuts would be
>>>>> important in that regard.
>>>>>
>>>>> Firstly, Matlab has a completely configurable list of shortcuts which
>>>>> would be nice to have as well, but maybe to complex for now?
>>>> That is also my goal for Octave, but I don't know how to do it.
>> My guess is you need to assign a QShortcut
>> (http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qshortcut.html) to any action instead
>> of the key-sequence directly and keep the shortcut object around to
>> change (or query) its key-sequence at any time. The connection to the
>> action should be unaffected...
>> But I may be wrong, I have never tries this...
> I never used QShortcuts. From a short view into the documentation I
> can't see a big difference between changing the key sequences of
> QShortcuts (which are connected to QActions) or directly changing the
> key sequences for the QActions. The shortcut manager itself (suitable
> user interface, changing shortcuts of all widgets without restart etc.)
> seems to be more challenging to me.
The difference seems to be that you can change the key sequence to the 
QShortcut object at any time, e.g. by a configure dialog but you never again
need to change the action it is assigned to...
In short, you define an action and instead of given it a key-sequence directly, 
you create a new QShortcut (the pointer to it you keep save) assign a
key-sequence to that and connect it to the action. Later on you can easily 
change the key-sequence assigned to the QShortcut object.
At least that is how understand it...

>
>>>>> "Help on Selection":
>>>>> Octave: does not have this as a shortcut, only context menu entry
>>>>> Matlab: F1
>>>>> This is a really nice feature, just put your cursor on a function and
>>>>> hit F1 to get the help text! Having it in a overlay-windows like Matlab
>>>>> would be nice, but just executing "help<function>" in the command
>>>>> window would be good enough for now. Drawback, if a command is running,
>>>>> this will not react...
>>>>> Should be done easily since we already have it in the context menu?
> Yes, this should really be no problem; I'll have a look at it.
>
>>>>> "Open Selection":
>>>>> Octave: does not have this
>>>>> Matlab: CTRL+D
>>>>> This is my favorite shortcut with Matlab especially if you work with
>>>>> lots of functions (as I usually do). Put your cursor on the function and
>>>>> press CTRL+D and the function opens as a new tab in the editor... Having
>>>>> this in the context menu as well and calling "edit<function>" would be
>>>>> nice. Drawback, if a command is running, this will not react...
> I guess we don't need to call 'edit' but just open a new file in the
> editor.
Well the problem is that it depends on the current paths settings which file to 
open....
I thought that only the running octave instance knows which file it would 
actually run if called...
If there is an easy way to determine which file would be opened, that would 
help to create a overlay/popup help window as well (see above)

>
>>>>> "Evaluate Selection":
>>>>> Octave: not available
>>>>> Matlab: F9
>>>>> Select some lines, press F9 and the selection will be evaluated, very
>>>>> useful, e.g. if you just play around with some lines for plotting...
> The structures for this feature already exist (evaluating lines from the
> history), should be no problem.
It is a bit different ... E.g. you can do this without any history..
> But I don't know if we should add new features just before a new release ...
This can wait for the next release
>
> Torsten
>
>