KeyUp/KeyDown - reference list of keys?

General
1

I’d like to do some basic stuff - delete, edit, nudge with the arrow keys, a selected object on a canvas.

I’m looking at the value of “key” in a KeyUp or KeyDown event to see what I need to catch, but it’s empty for non-alphabetical keys:

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In this case I hit the enter key, and it breaks into the debugger so I can see what I hit.

It works for letters, but all I’m really interested in capturing are things like Enter, Return, Delete, etc. Those all come up blank.

So is there a list somewhere that I can reference that contains all the non-alphabetical keys?

Also, related question: The app I’m making will likely be used by people with non-US keyboards. I’m only interested in capturing non-alphabetical keys. Are those keys different for different language keyboards, or are they consistent across all because they’re not letters? If they are different, how do I handle that?

2

Using String.Asc to get the numeric value of the key for comparison is probably the most straightforward way.

var keyCode as Integer = key.Asc

Select Case keyCode
Case 28 '// Left Arrow
   ...
End Select

Pipe it to System.DebugLog or use a breakpoint to inspect the value.

The app I’m making will likely be used by people with non-US keyboards. I’m only interested in capturing non-alphabetical keys. Are those keys different for different language keyboards, or are they consistent across all because they’re not letters? If they are different, how do I handle that?

I can’t think of any examples of this right off.

1 Like
3

thanks - that did it!

1 Like
4

On macOS, you have a graphical keyboard that let you see you all letters available from the keyboard (say œ of ñ are examples)…:

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5

Right. But the Keyboard Viewer app only shows you the keyboard layout for the kind of keyboard that’s currently connected to the computer. So you can’t (as far as I can tell) change the Keyboard Viewer to simulate a keyboard in another language while you have a US keyboard set up on that machine. I think you can change it in the control panel temporarily, but that’s making a system wide change, which is a pain if you’re trying to type out what you’re doing, because your keyboard layout is constantly changing.

6

KeyDown does not rely on the keyboard layout, unlike Keyboard.AsynchKeyDown. By the time KeyDown is called, Key has been translated to the actual character.