Certain keys do not work in Eclipse

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Keys that don't seem to work:

* Backspace
* PgUp/PgDn
* Arrow keys

Original issue reported on code.google.com by risu...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2009 at 9:49

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Eclipse is receiving the proper keycode in the associated event but it is also
receiving the state of modifier "keys," one of which is BUTTON1. Apparently, 
most
applications take no note of this & simply accept the keycode. Eclipse does 
this as
well save the seven keycodes mentioned. For these keycodes, Eclipse doesn`t do
anything with them.

So, one method to deal with it would be to modify the bindings of Eclipse but I 
see
no way to bind Left + BUTTON1 with an action.

It is possible that the Eclipse maintainers (or the Linux/SWT maintainers at 
least)
may consider this a bug on their behalf so it might be worth reporting this 
issue to
them.

I had limited success with the attached patch but this particular solution 
renders
the auto-repeat of pushed-down keys ineffective; thus it isn't a particularly
attractive solution. Some modification of it, however, may allow the keys to 
work as
expected.

Original comment by sunshinekisses@gmail.com on 1 Jan 2010 at 4:36

Attachments:

• cellwriter0c.diff

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I've logged https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=298766 for the 
inconsistent
behaviour in swt.

Regarding cellwriter, is it able to trigger the event such that it does not 
include
the BUTTON1 modifier?  It seems like if this app is a virtual keyboard then it 
should
trigger OS events that exactly match what is being mimicked.

Original comment by grant_ga...@yahoo.ca on 4 Jan 2010 at 4:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

First off, I'm neither the maintainer or original author; I just use it & would 
love
to see it work better with Eclipse.

From what I can tell, there are 2 methods available to produce synthetic key 
events:

1) XTestFakeKeyEvent(), and
2) XSendEvent().

CellWriter currently uses the XTestFakeKeyEvent() function which does not allow
modification of the state flag; it just sends the appropriate key event. One 
thing
that I noted & found rather appealing about using this method is the auto-repeat
functionality stays intact; the window manager (I suppose) notes that a key is
pressed (via XTestFakeKeyEvent()) and, after a while, causes repeated 
generation of
the key press with no assistance from the application that called 
XTestFakeKeyEvent().

On the other hand, there is XSendEvent(), which does allow sending any state 
flag one
wants. However, the auto repeat feature mentioned above no longer works. So for 
this
method to be viable (I suppose as I am not the maintainer), CellWritter would 
need to
implement its own auto-repeat which I'm certain is doable but does complicate 
matters
somewhat.

The attached patch causes CellWriter to use XSendEvent() (albeit imperfectly at 
the
moment) instead of XTestFakeKeyEvent(); the aforementioned 7 keys generated by
CellWriter work as expected in Eclipse aside from there being no auto repeat.

Original comment by sunshinekisses@gmail.com on 5 Jan 2010 at 11:51

Attachments:

• cellwriter_issue_27-xsendevent_a.diff