Idle Timer Hook?

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1

I’m currently trying to write a plugin that highlights the current line after the user idles for a few seconds. NormalIdle and InsertIdle hooks seem to execute the moment I stop doing anything (not a critique of the hook design, I understand why they behave this way and don’t think this behavior should change). The docs refer to these hooks as executing after a ‘certain duration of time’. Is there any way to set that timeout? A different way to emulate the behavior I described?

2

As explained in this thread:

the duration of time you are referring to is the value in milliseconds of the idle_timeout option. The default is 50 ms, which you experience as instantaneous and is too short for your use case. Change it to something bigger, for example 2 seconds:

set-option global idle_timeout 2000

and the behavior of your pluging should improve. See :doc options for more detailed info.

2 Likes
3

Thank you so much, that’s exactly what I was looking for.

For what it’s worth, I’m unsure if I would have been able to find this organically in the docs.

4

I have sympathy… :wink: When you are stuck, :doc options is a last-resort maneuver, but it often pays.

5

idle_timeout affects the timeout everywhere though and idling is used by a number of plugins, e.g. for generating completions. You might run into issues with even set-option window down the line.

6

You are right, the same idle_timeout variable is used by NormalIdle and InsertIdle. It would be good if different options were used for different purposes. Perhaps this should be filed under Complaints and Improvements?

7

It would be useful. Could be something like the special ui_options option

declare-option str-to-int-map idle_timeout default=50

set-option -add global idle_timeout completions_timeout=100
set-option -add global idle_timeout highlight_line_timeout=2000

hook global InsertIdle 'completions_timeout' %{
    eval %sh{generate-completions ... }
}

hook global InsertIdle 'highlight_line_timeout' %{
    add-higlighter...
}

I think OP could do something like

declare-option int timeout_temp
hook global InsertIdle %{
    set window timeout_temp %opt{idle_timeout}
    set window idle_timeout 1950 # maybe replace with an %sh to do math
    # if the second idle hook goes off add highlighter and reset idle
    hook -once window InsertIdle %{
        set global idle_timeout %opt{timeout_temp}
        add-highlighter ...
    }
    # when the user does something reset timeout
    # could have already been done. rm highlighter if it exists.
    hook -once window RawKey * %{
        set global idle_timeout %opt{timeout_temp}
        try %{ rm-highlighter ... }
    }
}

but this solution does not scale if other plugins use the same system. I also don’t know if the idle would re-trigger with the changed timeout or if Kakoune considers it still Idle from the first.