Modify Eye-of-Gnome (EoG) keyboard shortcuts

tl;dr version:

How should I modify the keyboard shortcuts of Eye-of-Gnome (EoG)

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More info:

As noted here, Spacebar will not be supported as a shortcut for viewing the next image.

So I want to edit the keyboard shortcuts for EoG. Based on instructions on this unix.stackexchange post I tried editing the ~/.config/eog/accels

I got a sample accels file from github.

I tried un-commenting and modifying appropriate lines. It makes no difference to EoG shortcuts.

This problem of EoG not responding to changes in accels file is also reported in this reddit post, but isn't resolved and the thread is archived.

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EDIT: I am also open to a "hacky" solution involving modifying source code and compiling. As EoG is a huge project, I need help in identifying the region of the project that needs to be modified.