Re: Re: win32 keyboard handler

From: william.lachance@sympatico.ca
Date: Fri Apr 11 2003 - 10:49:25 EDT

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    > --- Tomas Frydrych <tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net>
    > wrote: >
    > > The win32 keyboard handler seems rather broken, it
    > > only handles
    > > keyboard shortcuts made of Ctrl+letter. I does not
    > > allow any
    > > shortcuts using Alt, including Alt+Ctrl, and it does
    > > not allow any
    > > shortucts formed Ctrl+symbol/number. This means that
    > > many of our
    > > default bindings do not work.
    > >
    > > There might be good reasons for leaving the handling
    > > of keys modified
    > > with Alt alone to the system, but we really need to
    > > be processing the
    > > Alt+Ctrl combinations, and need to be able to use
    > > not only letters
    > > but also symbols and numbers with both Ctrl and
    > > Alt+Ctrl -- many of
    > > these are standard Word shortcuts.
    >
    > Hi Tomas. The Win32 keyboard handling code was just
    > reworked so maybe we lost some functionality? I'm not
    > sure. Our old code was too low-level and we were
    > blocking a few tools as well as the ALT+keypad stuff
    > from working.
    >
    > I suggest filing a bug report unless you can work on
    > adding the missing stuff right away.

    I had a look at the keyboard code last summer, when I was planning to completely rework it (this was before Jordi's patch). Anyway, somewhere in the keyboard code, there was a > 300 line comment discussing how the win32 keyboard system worked (one sure sign of broken code: long comments trying to justify its existence). I believe the system of trapping keypresses was more akin to what a video game would do rather than a desktop application -- the ALT+Ctrl keypress combination was the reason given.

    I don't know what the best solution is -- I'm not a win32 person. Maybe there's some Windows API magic that will give you the best of all worlds (weird keypress combinations AND alt-xxx AND weird keyboard input methods).

    Cheers,

    William Lachance
    william.lachance@sympatico.ca



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