Should support changing shortcuts via can_change_accels (menu item selection + key combination)

[Tobias Wolf]

Binary package hint: indicator-appmenu

Standard GTK menus support changing keyboard shortcuts displayed on the right hand side of the menus by highlighting the menu item and pressing the new shortcut. The feature is controlled by the can_change_accels Gconf key and is often the only supported way to configure shortcuts in applications [1].

[1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evince-list/2010-July/msg00036.html

[Tobias Wolf (towolf)]

Here’s another hint that this is official method of keyboard configuration:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2010-December/msg00036.html

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

I've tried it in unity with gedit. Enabling the /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels gconf key I can change the accels, but the change doesn't take effect: the menu shows the new accelerator (also reloading the application, if it supports saving this option), but the new accelerator doesn't work at all, while the old one still continues working...

[Tobias Wolf (towolf)]

Marco, can you cross-check if it works when you open the menu with F10?

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

Yes, with the F10 menu it correctly works!

[Carey Underwood (cwillu)]

No longer works with F10, nor does the shortcut even appear to be set.

[FERNmann (fernmann-deactivatedaccount)]

I strongly agree. This is a very user-friendly and standardised way of configuring shortcuts and it is easy to implement for the developer in GTK+ applications. Ubuntu should support it.

[Tomas Lukosius (tomas-ebox)]

Same here. I guess it's Unity issue.
Anyway http://empty.23inch.de/pmwiki.php/Main/EditShortcuts might me a temporary and dirty solution.

[Tomas Lukosius (tomas-ebox)]

About the solution just posted. Well I wish I could get it working in Unity! Got too excited too soon.

[Bernard Banko (beernarrd)]

I have tried the configs both in gconf-editor and dconf-editor and I was left without success.

[Bernard Banko (beernarrd)]

Actually the importance should not be "wishlist" but "regression" as this had worked in 10.10. Can anybody change it?

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

BTW: uninstalling indicator-appmenu makes can_change_accels actually work.

[FERNmann (fernmann-deactivatedaccount)]

Really? When you're no longer using the software who has the bug, you're no longer affected by it? Captain Obvious to the rescue! ;-)

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

FERNmann: well, I meant that it enables you to change shortcuts and that these changes are persisent when you install indicator-appmenu back (which is not so obvious:-))

[Andreas Grois (soulsource)]

That's clear. Still this is only a workaround. By the way, one needn't uninstall the global menu, one can simply disable it temporarily by unsetting the environment variable UBUNTU_MENUPROXY.

[FERNmann (fernmann-deactivatedaccount)]

A third workaround to change the accels: If an application supports accel changing (must call gtk_accel_map_load/gtk_accel_map_save to make accel changes persistent), a scheme-style configuration file should exist that maps the actions onto the keys, it can be edited by a normal text editor. Normally the file can be found in the application's configuration folder (e.g for Banshee: ~/.config/banshee-1/gtk_accel_map). After a restart of the application the changed shortcuts should work.

[Thomas Weber (th-we)]

Interestingly, for me it doesn't even work when uninstalling indicator-appmenu (in 12.10). I did use this feature in pre-Unity Ubuntu versions and I don't remember what was the last version that worked for me.

[viggy_prabhu (stove311987)]

Any recent update on this? I am using Ubuntu 14.04 and still not able to change Gedit shortcut.

[TomasHnyk (sup)]

It is even worse, GTK dropped support for this in version 3.10 that is included on 14.04 so it works only with GTK2 (with some hacks) applications.

[Emil Donca (emil-donca-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Everything menu-related in Ubuntu was awful throughout the years. It's like multiple concurrent failed attempts to come up with something newer and better (like global menus) when in fact it just produces inconsistency and removes something that works and people are familiar with.

Just upgraded to 14.04 only to find Nautilus has no menus whatsoever, and after 1h of searching I still don't get them.
can_change_accels works in neither dconf nor gconf, and manually editing accels files doesn't work, and files are overwritten on next program quit (by program I mean e.g. gedit). The level of regression in the area of Menus is just horrible.