Re: New devel to-do item (release all pressed keyboard keys on focus loss)

[John_Tobey at notes dot intdata dot com]

Caveat:

By "novice programmer" he means one intimately familiar with X server internals
and the Win32 API.

:-)

But thanks for the hints.

-John





"Harold Hunt" <huntharo@msu.edu> on 03-12-2001 12:06:59 AM

To:   "cygx" <cygwin-xfree@cygwin.com>
cc:    (bcc: John Tobey/Intdata)

Subject:  New devel to-do item (release all pressed keyboard keys on focus loss)




The following item was added to the Cygwin/XFree86 - Development - To-Do
List.  (http://xfree86.cygwin.com/devel/todo.html)

Caveat:

I will never personally implement this feature/bugfix because this item is
so easy and I have given so much information here that it would take even a
novice programmer less than two hours to implement.


Summary:

Release all keys when Cygwin/XFree86 loses focus


Description:

Cygwin/XFree86 currently releases mode keys (Alt, Ctrl, etc.) when it loses
the keyboard focus. This is necessary because a user may press Alt+Tab to
change to another window, in which case the Alt release message would never
be received by Cygwin/XFree86; upon returning the keyboard focus to
Cygwin/XFree86, the program will behave as it the Alt key is down. One
shortcoming of the current system is that other keys (a, b, 1, 2, etc.) are
not released when Cygwin/XFree86 loses the keyboard focus. Thus, a user may
press the 'a' key, then another application may cause an event that forces
Cygwin/XFree86 to lose keyboard focus, causing Cygwin/XFree86 not to receive
the release message for the 'a' key. The end result is that Cygwin/XFree86
will endlessly repeat the 'a' key press until the user returns the keyboard
focus to Cygwin/XFree86 and presses then releases the 'a' key to stop the
automatic repeat. The desired solution would be to release any keys that are
pressed. This will require some sort of table to indicate which key codes
are in the pressed state, so that pressed keys may be released upon losing
the keyboard focus. We can't use the Win32 API function GetKeyboardState ()
because that function gives us the Win32 Virtual Key codes, rather than the
OEM scan code that we need to send a key event to the X MI (machine
independent) input layer. It may be easier to send a release event for all
keys except the mode keys, regardless of the key state, given that sending a
release message for a key that is not down does not have any adverse side
effect. We currently do this last method for the mod keys (Alt, Ctrl, Shift,
Kana); earlier versions of Cygwin/XFree86 tracked the state of the mod keys
and only released the pressed mod keys. No adverse effects have been
observed from releasing all mod keys, and this method is also used by the
Windows VNC client.


Go forth and program,

Harold