Apply config changes without restarting

[paulfioravanti]

I'm wagering that the Tapey Tape config in tapey_tape.json probably isn't generally expected to change that often once set, but I've recently been changing it with high enough frequency that I've added code in a Tapey Tape fork that allows config changes to be applied without needing to restart Plover.

The only issue I can see is that it relies on declared private Plover steno engine API calls:

• _start_extensions
• _stop_extensions

Defense against this is to check whether the steno engine responds to the APIs before calling them so that it degrades to current behaviour.

Anyway, would this kind of change be something that you'd be interested in getting a PR for?

[paulfioravanti]

Actually, after taking a deep dive into steno engine hooks, I've now got a solution on my fork that:

• does not use the private APIs (unsurprisingly in hindsight, using them caused unexpected errors)
• refreshes Tapey Tape's config when you either press the Reconnect button on the Plover UI, or send a SET_CONFIG command via the keyboard/a chord

Happy to contribute anything deemed of value back to Tapey Tape's codebase.