Space bar is broken in eaf layer browser

[James-Hanson]

Description

Pressing the space bar in eaf layer browser does nothing and throws an error. I've tested this on a totally fresh Ubuntu 20.04 installation. I installed Emacs with snap.

Reproduction guide 🪲

• Start Emacs
• Add eaf to layers in .spacemacs file
• Restart Emacs to install
• Run M-x eaf-install
• Add all applications
• Open browser with SPC a a b o
• Open any website
• Press space bar

Observed behaviour: 👀 💔
Pressing space bar does nothing and throws an error:

apply: Wrong type argument: stringp, (epc-error "EPC-ERROR: No such method : call_function")

Expected behaviour: ❤️ 😄
Pressing space bar opens the menu and does not throw an error.

System Info 💻

• OS: gnu/linux
• Emacs: 27.2
• Spacemacs: 0.999.0
• Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 0ba8aa1)
• Graphic display: t
• Distribution: spacemacs
• Editing style: vim
• Completion: helm
• Layers:

(emacs-lisp helm multiple-cursors treemacs eaf)

• System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG CAIRO SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ M17N_FLT LIBOTF ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS LIBSYSTEMD JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP

[lebensterben]

Confirmed.
But I'm not able to do any debugging.
This package has never worked properly on my computer with 2 different OS.

[Vivien-lelouette]

Hello,

I am a Doom user, but I had the same issue.
Looking at the eaf source code, they are not calling the "call_function" but the "execute_function" instead.

The code given to doom users for the space bar to work is the following:

(define-key key-translation-map (kbd "SPC")
    (lambda (prompt)
      (if (derived-mode-p 'eaf-mode)
          (pcase eaf--buffer-app-name
            ("browser" (if  (string= (eaf-call-sync "call_function" eaf--buffer-id "is_focus") "True")
                           (kbd "SPC")
                         (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key)))
            ("pdf-viewer" (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key))
            ("image-viewer" (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key))
            (_  (kbd "SPC")))
        (kbd "SPC"))))

My fixed code is the following:

(define-key key-translation-map (kbd "SPC")
    (lambda (prompt)
      (if (derived-mode-p 'eaf-mode)
          (pcase eaf--buffer-app-name
            ("browser" (if (eaf-call-sync "execute_function" eaf--buffer-id "is_focus")
                           (kbd "SPC")
                         (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key)))
            ("pdf-viewer" (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key))
            ("image-viewer" (kbd eaf-evil-leader-key))
            (_  (kbd "SPC")))
        (kbd "SPC"))))

Note that the "stringp=" seems to be unecessary now.

Hope this can help you solve this issue for spacemacs !

Best Regards.

[TerryTsao]

Upstream wiki is outdated, while eaf APIs tend to be aggressively updated & live at HEAD. The workaround works perfectly. I'm willing to create PR (and fix upstream Wiki page) soon.