Get string value from modified key press

[uranusjr]

Hi,

I'm working on a key event related function. I use keyPressEvent to read in the keyboard inputs. The key() and string() values work fine on single press key events, but there is a problem.

When I press a key combination (control + c, for example), I receive two events. One has key = Qt::Key_Control, which is good. But the other has key = Qt::Key_C and string = QString(). Is there a way to convert the Qt::Key_* values to QString, QChar, or something similar?

A simple search in the docs yielded nothing, but I really wish I could find something here before diving into mapping all keys by myself (and there's the shift key modifier to consider...Aaaarrrrhh).

Thanks in advance.

[goetz]

The int key code values from Qt::Key_Space (0x20) until Qt::Key_AsciiTilde (0x7f) map directly to the respective ASCII codes of the characters. So it should be safe to do this:

@
int key = event->key();
QString keyString;
if(key >= Qt::Key_Space && key <= Qt::Key_AsciiTilde) {
// handle ASCII char like keys
keyString = QString( QChar(key) );
} else {
// handle the other keys here...
}
@

[uranusjr]

Thanks, that worked...a bit. :-(

Seems that key() doesn't handle shift key at all (not just the upper/lower cases), so I need to manually extinguish "!" and "1", "{" and "[", etc.

[goetz]

Yes. It handles the raw keys from the keyboard and does not interpret it into the (possible) character that is composed of the key and the modifiers. For that purpose the text() method exists.

[uranusjr]

But text() is not available when modifiers present. :-( Well, I guess I'll just manually mapped all non-alphanumeric keys on my keyboard. But how about keyboard layouts? £ instead of $ above 4 on british keyboard, ¥ instead of \ on Japanese keyboards, etc. Is there a way for me to detect this on run-time?

[andre]

Is there any way you could just use QKeySequence instead of trying to handle the raw events yourself?

[uranusjr]

I am building something similar to a terminal simulator that sends things like ctrl + ! to the server. The format the server takes (for the above example) is a CTRL, and then an ASCII '!', so I need to get the result of the keyboard output to send (through a TCP socket).

[goetz]

That depends on the modifiers. What text do you expect for Ctrl-C?

[uranusjr]

For alphabets the cases don't matter, so for ctrl + c both CTRL + 'C' and CTRL + 'c' are fine. I don't participate in the server side programming, so I'm not sure what they intend to do with non-ASCII keys. (Most likely they don't care -- the system we are building is not for public use, and we use mostly US-layout keyboards. My plan now is to ignore the problem and leave it for the testing team to worry about. :-p)

[goetz]

Programming by delegation ... good idea for the weekend approaching ;-P