kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/1/2018 9:28 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
> Here's a blog post from the developers of Atom editor talking about
> solving this problem:
> https://blog.atom.io/2016/10/17/the-wonderful-world-of-keyboards.html

I always new keyboard issues were bad but I didn't think they were this
bad.  Someone needs to sit down with keyboard and/or os manufactures and
start beating them about the head and shoulders with a clue bat until
they fix this mess.  So basically we have to create key mappers to
handle both os and keyboard layout differences to have any hope of
providing sane hotkey behavior.

> 
> I have not studied this at all yet but perhaps it is relevant (i.e.
> maybe we should be looking at EVT_CHAR too?)

These are the events from EVT_CHAR.

> 
> On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 9:19 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     On 2/28/2018 3:46 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>     > On 2/28/2018 2:31 PM, jp charras wrote:
>     >> Le 28/02/2018 à 17:45, Wayne Stambaugh a écrit :
>     >>> In the process of attempting to fix this bug[1], I ran into an issue
>     >>> with the '/' hotkey for all main frames.  For some reason, the
>     hotkey
>     >>> help dialog is being displayed for both '/' and '?' keys which
>     broke the
>     >>> track posture switching in pcbnew.  This bug only seems to affect
>     >>> windows.  The attached patch fixes the issue but changes the
>     menu entry
>     >>> shortcut text from '?' to 'shift+?' which would make pcbnew
>     different
>     >>> from all of the other mainframe windows which is ugly but it's
>     better
>     >>> than a broken hotkey.
>     >>>
>     >>> While I was at it, I took a look at the schematic editor and
>     sure enough
>     >>> the same behavior exists except that the same change as the attached
>     >>> patch does not fix the issue so the bus wire entry hotkey is broken.
>     >>> When I set a debugger breakpoint in the EDA_DRAW_PANEL::OnKeyEvent()
>     >>> function, it is not triggered for either a '/' key.  The '?' key
>     does
>     >>> trigger the breakpoint.  Did someone create a character hook
>     somewhere
>     >>> that could be preventing EDA_DRAW_PANEL from ever receiving the
>     '/' key
>     >>> presses and passing them directly to the SCH_EDIT_FRAME?  I
>     cannot find
>     >>> any reason why the EDA_DRAW_PANEL::OnKeyEvent() event handler is not
>     >>> being called for this key on windows.
>     >>>
>     >>> Cheers,
>     >>>
>     >>> Wayne
>     >>>
>     >>> [1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1751812
>     <https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1751812>
>     >>
>     >> Wayne,
>     >> Because the hotkeys can be redefined by user, I don't think your
>     fix is working.
>     >
>     > '/' is the default hotkey for change track posture in pcbnew and place
>     > bus wire entry in eeschema.  So user hotkey definitions are not
>     relevant
>     > since I have not changed any of my hotkey defaults.  What is odd
>     is that
>     > this fix works for pcbnew but not eeschema.
>     >
>     >>
>     >> Moreover it happen mainly in US keyboards
>     >> (I am guessing the chars '?' and '/' are the same keyboard key)
>     >
>     > They are on the same key on US keyboard.  That being said '/' is
>     not the
>     > same as key code as 'shift+/' or at least they shouldn't be the same.
>     >
>     >>
>     >> On Windows, the key events are really tricky, and I never be able
>     to fix the accelerators versus
>     >> hotkeys issues.
>     >>
>     >> In this case the issue is due to the complexity of keys events:
>     >> The simplified event list is:
>     >>
>     >> - first the EVT_CHAR_HOOK_EVENT is send with key code = '/'
>     >> if not captured:
>     >> - send EVT_CHAR_EVENT is send with key code = '?'
>     >>
>     >> and in fact there are more events sent, both using
>     EVT_CHAR_HOOK_EVENT and EVT_CHAR_EVENT.
>     >>
>     >> This is true for each key: a event is send with code
>     corresponding to the non shifted code, and then
>     >> to the shifted code (if the envent is not captured)
>     >>
>     >
>     > While all of this is informative it still does not answer the question
>     > as to why the '/' character is never getting handled in
>     > EDA_DRAW_PANEL::OnKeyEvent() while the '?' character is being handled.
>     > I'll keep digging around because something is different between the
>     > schematic and board editors.
>     >
> 
>     JP,
> 
>     I figured out what is going on with some simple tracing.  On windows
>     with US keyboard layouts, the '?' key is sent as a 'shift+/' which isn't
>     unexpected.  What is unexpected is that we are only allowing the shift
>     key to be passed when keys 'a' - 'z' and 'A' - 'Z' are pressed by this
>     code and associated comment:
> 
>         /* Disallow shift for keys that have two keycodes on them (e.g.
>     number and
>          * punctuation keys) leaving only the "letter keys" of A-Z.
>          * Then, you can have, e.g. Ctrl-5 and Ctrl-% (GB layout)
>          * and Ctrl-( and Ctrl-5 (FR layout).
>          * Otherwise, you'd have to have to say Ctrl-Shift-5 on a FR layout
>          */
>         bool keyIsLetter = ( localkey >= 'A' && localkey <= 'Z' ) ||
>                            ( localkey >= 'a' && localkey <= 'z' );
> 
>         if( event.ShiftDown() && ( keyIsLetter || localkey > 256 ) )
>             localkey |= GR_KB_SHIFT;
> 
>     This means any keys such as ';:', ''"', ',<', '>.', '/?', etc. will most
>     likely be broken when used as hotkeys.  I could easily add the '/' to
>     the keyIsLetter text code but that is an ugly hack which will most
>     likely break for non-us keyboard layouts.  Any ideas how to implement
>     this cleanly or is this just an ugliness we have to live with due to
>     keyboard layout issues?
> 
>     Cheers,
> 
>     Wayne
> 
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