Re: [DOM3Events] Comments on DOM Level 3 key events

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Mounir Lamouri <mounir@lamouri.fr> wrote:

> On 10/26/2012 09:10 AM, Hallvord R. M. Steen wrote:
> > Mounir Lamouri <mounir@lamouri.fr> skreiv Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:50:55
> +0200
> >> However, I think we should use a new attribute instead of 'key'.
> >> Otherwise, on my laptop, it would be hard to know what this would be
> >> doing:
> >> { char: '', key: 'Home' }
> >> it could be the 'Home' key or the 'BrightnessUp' depending on my
> >> pressing 'Fn' or not.
> >
> > But this has nothing to do with identifying the "physical key". The
> > "key:Home" property does a pretty good job at that (if we spec it like I
> > think we agree we should, i.e. disregarding modifier keys - that
> > presumably includes Fn).
> >
> > Here you seem to be looking for a way to determine what the key would do
> > if the script did not interfere, sort of like an event.nativeShortcut
> > property. That seems like a very different use case to me.
> >
> > In general, the OS or platform will always be able to filter out and
> > respond to some keypresses, like Fn+function keys or ctrl-alt-delete, we
> > probably can't demand that a web app should be able to respond to
> > absolutely every key combination.
>
> My issue isn't with the key event not being sent to the web application.
> Let say the OS is Web based and I'm writing an application that handles
> the screen brightness, I want to know when the 'BrightnessUp' or
> 'BrightnessDown' keys are pressed. However, if 'key' always gives me the
> physical key, I will only get 'Home' and 'End' even if 'Fn' was pressed.
> I think the correct way here is to say that the physical key is whether
> 'Home' or 'End' and the key value is 'BrightnessUp' or 'BrightnessDown'.
>  Am I clearer?
>
I must say that my original issue was only about alphabetical "key" value
with or without special keys (Shift, Crtl,...).
In this case, key='BrightnessUp' if 'Fn' was pressed and key='Home' if 'Fn'
was not pressed would be good enough.

And the API to detect all possible values of "key" property would be the
great solution, but only for specific cases.