Re: Keyboard events

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Doug Reynolds (dsreyn@ll.mit.edu) writes:
 
> I'm in the process of writing a new application, and several of the likely
> users have requested that I allow various keyboard "shortcuts", as an
> alternative to clicking on various controls with the mouse.  For example,
> we will need to define a region in an image that will be zoomed in a
> separate draw window, and it would be nice to be able to use arrow keys
> to position and resize the zoom region.
> 
> I've never tried to do this before in IDL (previously I've been content
> to handle mouse events), so I went looking through the manuals to figure
> out how to do it.  Unfortunately, the event handling routines seem to be
> limited to mouse and focus events.  The closest thing I could find was the
> get_kbrd function; someone here suggested putting a call to get_kbrd in
> the event handling function.  However, it would seem that this would cause
> keyboard events to queue up, unprocessed, until the user wiggled the mouse.
> In other words, it doesn't seem to be quite what I need.
> 
> Is there something in the documentation that I have overlooked?  Any ideas
> would be most appreciated.

As Wesley says in the Princess Bride, "Get used to disappointment."

How come this hasn't made the Top 10 List? I'm putting it
at number 3, right after "Chop IDL Up into Pieces and Charge
Us for Every Bit". :-)

Cheers,

David

P.S. For a clever hack by JD Smith, see this article on my
web page:

   http://www.dfanning.com/tips/keyboard_events.html

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155