Setting up shortcuts conditions and activation flags for a plugin.

Develop Developer Questions
1

I’m making a plugin and my shortcut to invoke the plugin works or doesn’t work depending on which layer is currently active (but my plugin’s code has nothing to do with what layers are there).

Since it works on some layers I guess the python code isn’t the problem here. So maybe my action file, or desktop?

Just to be clear I noticed some krita built-in shortcuts don’t work either so I’m not sure if this is related just to my plugin or not.

Win 10, latest Krita version (4.4.1)

Here’s an example of my problem:

If active layer is a regular paint layer everything works just fine.
If active layer is group layer my plugin doesn’t get triggered at all (changing brush to erase mode also doesn’t work, …).
If active layer is vector layer my plugin doesn’t get triggered at all (changing brush to erase mode also doesn’t work, …).

As mentioned above, the plugin works just fine if the paint layer is active so I don’t think the python code is the culprit (I tested it on different plugins or empty templates and all the same).

My action is set as this in python (I simplified it so hopefully there are no typoos - as mentioned above the script itself works on paint layer):

class TestExtension(Extension):
  def __init__(self,parent):
    super(TestExtension, self).__init__(parent)

  def setup(self):
    pass

  def testDialog(self):
    Dialog("test")

  def createActions(self, window):  
    self.testAction= window.createAction("testAction", "Test Action", "tools/scripts")
    self.testAction.setAutoRepeat(False)
    self.testAction.triggered.connect(self.testDialog)

Dialog is just a class I use to check if things work or not.

class Dialog(QDialog):
  def __init__(self, text, parent=None):
      super(Dialog, self).__init__(parent)
      self.setLayout(QVBoxLayout())
      self.label = QLabel(str(text))
      self.layout().addWidget(self.label)
      self.resize(200, 50)
      self.exec_()

My action file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ActionCollection version="2" name="Scripts">
    <Actions category="Scripts">
    
        <text>Test Action</text>
        <Action name="testAction">
        <icon></icon>
        <text>Test Action</text>
        <whatsThis></whatsThis>
        <toolTip></toolTip>
        <iconText></iconText>
        <activationFlags>10000</activationFlags>
        <activationConditions>0</activationConditions>
        <shortcut>`</shortcut>
        <isCheckable>false</isCheckable>
        <statusTip></statusTip>
        </Action>
    </Actions>
</ActionCollection>

I tried changing activationFlags to 0 just in case but nothing (I don’t really know what I set here and I can’t find it).

I would really appreciate some help with this, I’m completely out of any ideas how to deal with this and I can’t find much information about .action files.

Also I don’t know maybe it’s just a problem that my Dialog doesn’t work but since it works with paint layer, fill layer, … I still doubt it.

To be clear, nothing happens, no dialog pops up. I also tried setting up a separate window (prepared in advance) with a label inside so I could just change the labels text to see but no change again. It seems that my shortcut doesn’t get triggered at all either that or my action doesn’t get triggered with some layers for some reason.
(to be clear my code itself has nothing to do with layers so there’s also no code for that, the example extension above also doesn’t work for me.)

Thank you very much I’m really at my wit’s end at this point.

EDIT:
I can catch key+mouse events with a separate object so it really looks like the shortcut itself is disabled in Krita depending on which layer you are currently on. I really don’t know how to enable it everywhere :?

2

Ok, I figured it out. It was my mistake.

As a backup I had an extra .action file inside my plugin’s directory so:
krita/actions/myaction.action
krita/pykrita/myplugin/myaction.action

I was expecting the krita/actions dir to be the main but turns out the .action file inside myplugin’s directory is loaded instead so no changes to krita/actions/myaction.action took any effect.

Activation and condition to tirgger the shortcut is through activationFlags and activationConditions in the action file.

These are in binary format not a decimal or hex.

On iirc dmitriK kindly posted an image with flags from krita’s code so here it is:

index
index1170×655 104 KB

I’m leaving this as an answer here just in case someone else gets to troubles setting up the action file since there’s not really any info about it anywhere.
(in the picture the codes are in hex format so convert it to binary if you need to use it)
(this is from kis_action.h - google this through krita keyword to get to the source code in case the codes change in the future)

3

Is your plugin able to change what a keyboard key does based on what tool is selected? I’d be really interested in customizing Krita in this way, to make the hotkeys more conditional, so that one key could be used in multiple ways. (similar to blender)

4

Shortcuts just trigger actions what the action does (your script) is completely up to you. Just detect what tool is active and do your stuff. :slight_smile: