I want to show users a list of the deadkeys they can press using their current Windows language & keyboard. (As opposed to a list of possible graves, circumflexes and acutes which their keyboard doesn't operate as deadkeys.)
Grateful for help.
Keyboard layout (including dead keys) are fixed in the keyboard driver. This means your problem can be reduce to getting the setting for keyboard. Use Windows API GetLocaleInfoW() function to get the information and then create the list of dead keys for each keyboard. For your reference have a look at: Windows-keyboard-layout and GetLocaleInfoW
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I always use numeric keypad as arrows, as I find it more convenient than using an separate arrow pad. Until recently I used a tool Karabiner Elements, but it stopped functionning at Big Sur.
Yes, The Karabiner developer is working on that issue, but it will be better to solve it without relying on a third-party tool.
It will be enough for me to either remap Xcode, or (which is preferred) to change key bindings in the system, using a tool like hidutil.
Xcode's Preferences - Key Binding has a section Text - Section. When I try to modify the binding for say Move Down by pressing Down arrow on numeric keypad it comes up as '2'. Now whereever I press '2', on keyboard or numeric keypad, it always works as Move Down which is certainly not what I am after.
About hidutil. I couldn't find a good manual or any example of keyboard mapping.
Any help?
Had another look at this article. Here is the answer:
hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005A,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000051},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000060,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000052},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005C,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000050},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005E,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004F},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005F,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004A},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000061,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004B},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000059,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004D},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000005B,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004E},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000062,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000049},
{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000063,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000004C}]}'
Still can't fugure out, how to do (if possible) complex mapping with modifier keys (eg Ctrl+PgUp to Home), but that's another topic.
This is more a best practices/usability question around the behavior of MacOS apps.
I have an app where a user is constantly typing into a NSTextView (think text editor).
I want to support a few keyboard shortcuts for common tasks within the app so that the user does not need to reach for the mouse to click a button.
But because the user is also typing into a text view, this is a bit tricky figuring out what combinations are available.
All single character keys are off limits (since the user will actually want to type that character).
Most cmd+key combinations are also taken (cmd+c, cmd+left, cmd+right, etc).
What's the expected behavior/best practice here?
I use my command keys as extra control keys on Mac OS X (and I believe the space cadet keyboards had this configuration). I want to emulate this on my Windows machines by switching Alt to Ctrl and the Windows key to Alt within Emacs. Is this possible? I found this post which suggests something like
(setq w32-pass-lwindow-to-system nil
w32-pass-rwindow-to-system nil
w32-pass-apps-to-system nil
w32-lwindow-modifier 'super ;; Left Windows key
w32-rwindow-modifier 'super ;; Right Windows key
w32-apps-modifier 'hyper) ;; Menu key
to get super and hyper keys upon pressing the windows key. When I try to remap this to 'control to test it out (but eventually I want it to be meta and Alt as Ctrl, as mentioned), windows-e still gets intercepted by Windows (XP) and opens Explorer, but seems like a good place to start? I would appreciate any suggestions.
From the documentation for w32-pass-lwindow-to-system:
Note that some combinations of the left "Windows" key with other keys are
caught by Windows at low level, and so binding them in Emacs will have no
effect. For example, <lwindow>-r always pops up the Windows Run dialog,
<lwindow>-<Pause> pops up the "System Properties" dialog, etc. However, see
the doc string of `w32-phantom-key-code'.
From the documentation for w32-phantom-key-code:
Virtual key code used to generate "phantom" key presses.
Value is a number between 0 and 255.
Phantom key presses are generated in order to stop the system from
acting on "Windows" key events when `w32-pass-lwindow-to-system' or
`w32-pass-rwindow-to-system' is nil.
And as it also says on Xah's website:
There's no way around that unless you use other tools such as AutoHotkey. Even so, it may not be possible to disable 【Win+l】 (lock window) and 【Win+u】 (easy access).
So it seems that if it doesn't work with the method he describes (which seems right), you should look into AutoHotKey.
Consider that, for a Windows video game, I need to determine if the key which generates the ` and ~ characters on the U.S. English keyboard layout (which is usually below the Escape key and left to 1) has been pressed. This may sound like a trivial question, but it doesn't seem like one to me.
When Windows sends keyboard messages, it specifies the virtual key code and the OEM scan code. We can't rely on the OEM scan code, because "the value depends on the OEM" - and nor can we depend on the virtual key code, because it depends on the currently active keyboard layout.
Our current "solution" is to use LoadKeyboardLayout and MapVirtualKeyEx to find the OEM scan code of the key that generates the ` character on the U.S. English keyboard layout, then just listen for that OEM scan code. The problem is that this doesn't work if the user doesn't have the U.S. English layout installed.
Is there a real way to do this on Windows?
The OEM scancode does not change from keyboard to keyboard. No reason not to use it.
Back in the DOS-days the same scancodes have been used for games because it has been the only way to detect key-up and key-down events. Noone had problems with it and I doubt it will change in the future.
If you want another option you may want to give DirectInput-API a try. It gives you the raw scancodes as well and if I'm not mistaken you can also query the physical position, dimension and whatnot of each key.
Tie the game action to the character, not the position of the key. Otherwise, how do you tell the user which key to press? "under the escape key"? They may not have anything there, but if you tell them "the ^ key", they can look for it.
You'll probably also want to make it configurable to accomodate exotic keyboard layouts and user preferences.
I have a keyboard event listener, and I am listening for the number pad key codes (1 through 9) for when number lock is activated; this works fine. However, in my app I also want to allow usage of a modifier key (CTRL) along with the number pad keys. The strange thing is that when holding CTRL, pressing 1 or 3 does not generate any keyboard event whatsoever, whereas 2 and 4 - 9 do generate the expected events. I have seen other references to this issue after some Googling, so I do not believe this is necessarily Flash-specific, but I have yet to find any answers.
I tried using SHIFT as a modifier, but that just results in generating the key codes from the number pad as if number lock was off (eg, SHIFT+Numpad1 returns the End keycode, regardless of number lock state) - apparently this is intentional Windows behavior. ALT is not an option with the numpad due to altcodes.
Any ideas on how to get CTRL+Numpad1 and CTRL+Numpad3 to generate the keyboard events? Or any explanation as to why they don't?
Edit: I tried out using these key combinations in Firefox as enriquein suggests below, and all the key combinations work A-OK, leading me to believe that this is likely a Flash-specific issue, or at least not a hardware issue.
I have run into issues in the past with numpad keys on specific keyboards. Various key combinations fail to register on specific keyboards, and it is possible that the keyboard you are using may just not be generating any event in that case. It's not guaranteed to work, but I would recommend trying out a different keyboard (different vendor, etc) and see if that works. It also might be an issue with localized keyboards, if you are using a non-english keyboard.
I'm almost certain it's not Flash related because I had similar problems with a localized keyboard and could not get it to generate events at all for certain keys or key combinations.
Try enumerating all key events and searching trough what they're mapped to, or google evtest.c, compile it and run it and see what it has to say.
Indeed it looks like its keyboard specific. I tried the key combinations as I read this question in Firefox and they triggered the same event as pressing Ctrl+Number (which is switch to tab #Number).
This was using a standard US/101-key english keyboard (no extra media buttons or anything).
Some keyboards don't register certain key combinations. I think that this is down to how they are put together. For example some may register left hand Ctrl + key combination but not right Ctrl + same key!
A work around would be to detect the key down and key up events for the Ctrl key.
You could then raise a custom event for Ctrl + numpad key or work with a volatile flag to show the Ctrl key state.