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SeanArchibald / scale-workshop

Design microtonal scales and play them in your web browser. Export your scales for use with VST instruments. Convert Scala files to various tuning formats.
https://sevish.com/scaleworkshop/
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Use key scancode instead of key character #124

Open Azorlogh opened 3 years ago

Azorlogh commented 3 years ago

Currently, scale workshop uses the property KeyboardEvents.which (deprecated name of KeyboardEvents.key), this makes key identification dependent of the user's keyboard layout. However there is now a more appropriate property which is KeyboardEvent.code, which gives the physical position of the key.

Right now I have just added some keymapping code to synth.js as a quick proof of concept, so I can get guidance on how to actually implement the change.

I have some doubts about how MacOS handles the .code property however. According to this, it may not give the actual physical key position, but I may be misunderstanding the statement. If a MacOS user can check if my fork works with different keyboard layouts it would be very useful.

If it works on MacOS, I don't see a reason to keep the keyboard layout handling code/dropdown. Otherwise, it may still be needed as a special case.

EDIT:

123

Bonus, I haven't implemented it yet but it should be easy to accommodate for differences in the ISO and ANSI layouts with this change.

114

Also, actually, even if this works on MacOS, some layout handling code may still be needed because of odd keyboards that don't follow the standard ISO/ANSI shape. I think the right long term solution for this is to allow the user to remap any scancode to any position on the grid (or not necessarily a grid), but this will be for a later PR. #31

vsicurella commented 3 years ago

I can confirm your proof of concept works on macOS! At least on a standard-layout US MacBook. I use a Colemak layout by default, and the scale played as expected.

Azorlogh commented 3 years ago

This is great! Then I think we can merge this after tidying up the code. I'll get back to it soon.

minerscale commented 3 years ago

As mentioned in #136, this doesn't entirely fix the issue for users who have a physical keyboard with the layout hardcoded. (like my keyboard). I have a qwerty layer defined but it's far from ideal (with typing and all it's very confusing). Many other programs (I'm looking at you zynaddsubfx and renoise) also have this issue.

frostburn commented 2 years ago

Some keyboards have an extra key to the left side of KeyZ with the code IntlBackslash. It would be nice to have the option to use a wider layout.