kwriteconfig6 to a group containing square brackets

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1

Hello, I’m trying to use kwriteconfig to enable and disable ‘on button down scrolling’, however, this config is on a group whose name contains square brackets which are being escaped by the tool.

This is my ~/.config/kcminputrc file:

[Libinput][5426][92][Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite]
PointerAcceleration=0.200
PointerAccelerationProfile=1
ScrollMethod=4

I’m attempting to update the ScrollMethod value with
kwriteconfig6 --file kcminputrc --group "Libinput][5426][92][Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite" --key ScrollMethod 0

But all that does is create a new group with the escaped brackets:

[Libinput][5426][92][Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite]
PointerAcceleration=0.200
PointerAccelerationProfile=1
ScrollMethod=4

[Libinput\x5d\x5b5426\x5d\x5b92\x5d\x5bRazer Razer DeathAdder Elite]
ScrollMethod=0

Is there a way to circunvent this escaping? If not, what’s the standard way to notify applications of the change if I were to manually edit the file?

2

kwriteconfig6 --help says:

  --group <group>  Group to look in. Use "<default>" for the root group, or use
                   repeatedly for nested groups.

I tried the following with a dummy file and it works:

kwriteconfig6 \
--file bleprc \
--group Libinput \
--group 5426 \
--group 92 \
--group 'Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite' \
--key ScrollMethod 0

~  → bat ~/.config/bleprc 
───────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       │ File: /home/blumen/.config/bleprc
───────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
   1   │ [Libinput][5426][92][Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite]
   2   │ ScrollMethod=0
───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 Like
3

The group name does not contain square brackets (that is a character not allowed in group names).
What you are seeing is nested groups

LibInput
    5426
        92
            Razer Razer DeathAdder Elite
                PointerAcceleration=0.200

See comment by @Herzenschein on how to instruct kwriteconfig to address them :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

Thank you! The above solves that issue, however, the --notify flag does not make applications aware of the change as I expected… Not even restarting plasmashell worked, only signing out of my session and signing back in made the system aware of the change. How can I replicate the effect the settings’ ‘Apply’ button has? Immediately making the changes take effect?

5

Hmm, assuming this is managed by KWin (I suspect this is the case based on some MRs on Invent), then reconfigure should work, I have an example in an old script of mine: meta-overview.bash · master · Thiago Sueto / kdialogscripts · GitLab

So like this, but the actual qdbus binary might vary depending on your distro:

qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure

If this were managed by Plasma you could call:

qdbus org.kde.plasmashell /PlasmaShell org.kde.PlasmaShell.refreshCurrentShell

But since it doesn’t work when restarting plasmashell, that’s probably not the case.

6

Yeah sadly no dice with either of those. From your script I’ve installed and tried the qdbus and the qdbus-qt5 binaries for testing.

Something I noticed is that, when manually editing this specific setting via the settings GUI, the respective file isn’t updated at all (flushed) until I logoff and login again, if that’s any use.

I am running Fedora.