how to catch arrow keys ?

[Stef Mientki-2]

hello,

I'm trying to catch arrow keys to manipulate cursors in a plot.

Now I tried both ,   wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN and wx.EVT_CHAR,
and they seem to work equally bad ...
... if I press a normal character, the event is catched
... if I press an arrow key, I don't catch anything
and even weirder ...
... after pressing an arrow key, I can't catch any normal characters
anymore ?

Who can enlighten me ,
thanks,
Stef Mientki

[yahody]

Stef Mientki wrote:

> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">hello,
>
> I'm trying to catch arrow keys to manipulate cursors in a plot.
>
> Now I tried both ,   wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN and wx.EVT_CHAR,
> and they seem to work equally bad ...
> ... if I press a normal character, the event is catched
> ... if I press an arrow key, I don't catch anything
> and even weirder ...
> ... after pressing an arrow key, I can't catch any normal characters
> anymore ?
>
> Who can enlighten me ,
> thanks,
> Stef Mientki
>
> </div>

I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events work
for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to catch the
left arrow key:

<code>
def onKey(self, event):
    keycode = event.GetKeyCode()
    if keycode == wx.WXK_LEFT:
            print 'You pressed left arrow!'
    event.Skip()
</code>

Mike

[Stef Mientki-2]

> I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events
> work for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to
> catch the left arrow key:
hi Mike,
I'm too on winXP, I bind to the graphical control,
are you binding to the application ?

cheers,
Stef

[Phillip Watts]

On Thursday 22 May 2008 15:02:40 Stef Mientki wrote:

> > I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events
> > work for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to
> > catch the left arrow key:
>
> hi Mike,
> I'm too on winXP, I bind to the graphical control,
> are you binding to the application ?
>
> cheers,
> Stef
>

I pretty much had to give up on what to bind to for what kind of key
and just created an accelerator table (with help from this group).
That solved it.

[Mike Driscoll-2]

Stef,

> <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">
>> I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events
>> work for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to
>> catch the left arrow key:
> hi Mike,
> I'm too on winXP, I bind to the graphical control,
> are you binding to the application ?
>
> cheers,
> Stef
>
>
> </div>

I'm binding to a wx.Grid widget in my application. Still, I would think
that would work. Maybe Robin or Andrea can give us some advice?

Mike

[Robin Dunn]

Mike Driscoll wrote:

> Stef,
>>> I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events
>>> work for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to
>>> catch the left arrow key:
>> hi Mike,
>> I'm too on winXP, I bind to the graphical control,
>> are you binding to the application ?
>>
>> cheers,
>> Stef
>>
>
> I'm binding to a wx.Grid widget in my application. Still, I would think
> that would work. Maybe Robin or Andrea can give us some advice?

How are you doing the event binding?  If you're not binding to the
widget that has the focus then your handler will not be called.

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org  Java give you jitters?  Relax with wxPython!

[Stef Mientki-2]

hi Robin,

Robin Dunn wrote:

> Mike Driscoll wrote:
>> Stef,
>>>> I bind to wx.EVT_KEY_DOWN on Windows XP and the arrow key's events
>>>> work for me. For example, in my handler I just put the following to
>>>> catch the left arrow key:
>>> hi Mike,
>>> I'm too on winXP, I bind to the graphical control,
>>> are you binding to the application ?
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Stef
>>>
>>
>> I'm binding to a wx.Grid widget in my application. Still, I would
>> think that would work. Maybe Robin or Andrea can give us some advice?
>
> How are you doing the event binding?  

I'm binding the event to the plotcanvas, which is derived from a wx.Window.
> If you're not binding to the widget that has the focus then your
> handler will not be called.
>
Good point, I forgot that, and it explains most behavior.
I now setfocus explicitly  to the plotcanvas, whenever I click on it,
which greatly improves the behavior, because I can catch key events
again, after using the arrow-keys.
Indeed focus seems to be the major problem.

So now when the plotcanvas has focus,
it catches most keys, even windows-key, menu-key, special mm-keys,
and after regaining focus it catches the keys again
except :
  tab and arrow-keys.

Tab and arrow keys moves the focus to another plotcanvas (also derived
from wx.Window) in the same active window.
The window is layout as follows:

    self.Splitter_Plots    ,SplitterVer
      self.Panel           ,PanelVer, 010
        self.Panel_Top     ,PanelHor, 11
          Label_Top        ,wx.StaticText
        self.Scope_Normal  ,PlotCanvas         ,self, Real_Time
        self.Panel_Bottom  ,PanelHor
          Label_Bottom     ,wx.StaticText
      self.Scope_History   ,PlotCanvas_History ,self, Real_Time

which for this specific problem can be simplified to

    self.Splitter_Plots    ,SplitterVer
      self.Scope_Normal    ,PlotCanvas         ,self, Real_Time
      self.Scope_History   ,PlotCanvas_History ,self, Real_Time

now it seems to me that if the window is active,
focus is set to one of the 2 plot-canvases.

The tab key and the arrow keys,
simply toggles focus between the 2 plot-canvases.

As I want to use the arrow keys for finetuning a crosshair,
(simply because it's the most human interpretation),
how can I catch the arrow keys,
and do something useful with it,
other than toggling the focus.

thanks,
Stef

[Robin Dunn]

Stef Mientki wrote:

> As I want to use the arrow keys for finetuning a crosshair,
> (simply because it's the most human interpretation),
> how can I catch the arrow keys,
> and do something useful with it,
> other than toggling the focus.

Try adding the style wx.WANTS_CHARS.

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org  Java give you jitters?  Relax with wxPython!

[Stef Mientki-2]

Robin Dunn wrote:

> Stef Mientki wrote:
>
>> As I want to use the arrow keys for finetuning a crosshair,
>> (simply because it's the most human interpretation),
>> how can I catch the arrow keys,
>> and do something useful with it,
>> other than toggling the focus.
>
> Try adding the style wx.WANTS_CHARS.
>

thanks Robin,
that works great !!

Isn't the name a little bit strange:
without "wx.WANT_CHARS" you can catch every (character) key except
arrow-keys and tab,
and with "wx.WANT_CHARS" you can catch also arrow-keys and tab ?

cheers,
Stef

[Robin Dunn]

Stef Mientki wrote:

>
>
> Robin Dunn wrote:
>> Stef Mientki wrote:
>>
>>> As I want to use the arrow keys for finetuning a crosshair,
>>> (simply because it's the most human interpretation),
>>> how can I catch the arrow keys,
>>> and do something useful with it,
>>> other than toggling the focus.
>>
>> Try adding the style wx.WANTS_CHARS.
>>
> thanks Robin,
> that works great !!
>
> Isn't the name a little bit strange:
> without "wx.WANT_CHARS" you can catch every (character) key except
> arrow-keys and tab,
> and with "wx.WANT_CHARS" you can catch also arrow-keys and tab ?

Yeah, I think the name is basically a historical artifact that evolved
from slightly different functionality, and also the name of the flag
that is used for the Windows API.

--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org  Java give you jitters?  Relax with wxPython!