Global shortcut keys?
isolationism
Amarok to be ... well, crap. I've been looking for a new music client
since then. After trying out a dozen or so I've settled on QMPDclient;
it's just about perfect.
The one thing I would love to see included in QMPDclient is support
for global shortcut keys, in particular:
- Playback control (previous, play, pause, stop, next)
- Show/Hide QMPDclient window (from/to "system tray")
I've done a bit of digging around to try to uncover where these might
be, but so far I've had no success:
- The "Shortcuts" set in the "Preferences" menu are local to the
application only, meaning if the application is minimized they don't
work
- QMPDclient doesn't appear in System Settings > Keyboard & Mouse >
Global Keyboard Shortcuts > KDE component select control
- QMPDclient doesn't seem to register any DBUS interfaces (which is
kind of a DIY approach to global shortcuts, but is fine); this is how
Exaile supports global shortcuts in KDE. It's a bit more trouble to
set up than the first two possibilities, but better than nothing.
I guess there are really two questions.
1 - Am I going about this the wrong way entirely? Should I be binding
playback shortcuts directly to the MPD daemon somehow instead? This
line of questioning is only half-valid because it doesn't address the
display/hiding of QMPDclient, and because other MPD clients like GMPC
do support global shortcuts (e.g. via "Preferences > Multimedia Keys"
in GMPC).
2 - Is there something already in QMPD that supports some of this
functionality but that I am missing somewhere? If not, can this
message constitute a feature request?
voker57
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 01:19:49PM -0800, isolationism wrote:
> - The "Shortcuts" set in the "Preferences" menu are local to the
> application only, meaning if the application is minimized they don't
> work
Right.
> 1 - Am I going about this the wrong way entirely? Should I be binding
> playback shortcuts directly to the MPD daemon somehow instead? This
> line of questioning is only half-valid because it doesn't address the
> display/hiding of QMPDclient, and because other MPD clients like GMPC
> do support global shortcuts (e.g. via "Preferences > Multimedia Keys"
> in GMPC).
> - Playback control (previous, play, pause, stop, next)
For this, it's much better to directly control mpd (or via mpc).
I use xbindkeys for that, there used to be a way to bind custom commands
to multimedia keys in KDE3, i think it's still there in KDE4.
However, if QMPDClient gets global shortcuts, this shouldn't be a problem to implement.
> - Show/Hide QMPDclient window (from/to "system tray")
This is QMPDClient problem indeed.
> 2 - Is there something already in QMPD that supports some of this
> functionality but that I am missing somewhere?
No, there isn't.
> If not, can this message constitute a feature request?
Yes, it can.
isolationism
I will look into setting keybindings for MPD in the meanwhile to
control playback, as this covers 90% of my immediate need (e.g.
quickly pausing music when the phone rings). I look forward to seeing
"global shortcut keys" implemented in a future release. Please let me
know if you require any help, e.g. testing etc.