| Documentation: Keyboard Focus [Remove Frame]

There are several ways we currently move the focus around:

1. Move the focus to the widget you clicked on.
2. Use Alt-L to move the focus to the control AFTER a label with name &Label.
3. Using arrow keys. The arrow keys currently inspect the geometry of the GUI to determine the next control; I believe this works pretty well [each layout manager needs its own code for the arrow navigation as different layout managers obviously have different layout patterns].
4. Using TAB or BACK TAB. Here we simply move to the next sibling, or if that sibling is a composite, to that composite's first child. At the toplevel widget we loop around so we visit all widgets eventually tabbing around.

So how does it work?

      top
       |
       |
       v
      composite#1
       |       |
       |       v
    child#1   composite#2
               |       |
               |       |
           composite#3 |
                       v
                      child#2

Each widget may have a focus child; keyboard events are delivered to the toplevel widget (top).

The concept of "focus chain" is the delivery of keyboard events from the top down to a specific control [in the diagram above this could be:

    	top->composite#1->composite#2->child#2

for example.

setFocus() puts a widget into the focus chain. If the toplevel widget had the REAL focus from the window system [the window manager only assigns keyboard focus to a toplevel window], then setFocus() generates a SEL_FOCUSIN message; note that in the process of child->setFocus(), the whole chain is built up by upward recursion, and the child does not become switched into the focus chain until the parent is also.

The recursion stops when we either reach the toplevel widget or we find a widget which was already in the focus chain. Of course widgets which leave the focus chain by means of killFocus(), which works very similarly.

So if we had a focus chain:

    	top->composite#1->child#1

and assign the focus to child#2, and if the toplevel widget had windowmanager's focus already, we will see events like:

    	child#1      SEL_FOCUSOUT
    	composite#2  SEL_FOCUSIN
    	child#2      SEL_FOCUSIN

If we click on another toplevel window, we get:

    	child#2	     SEL_FOCUSOUT
    	composite#2  SEL_FOCUSOUT
    	composite#1  SEL_FOCUSOUT
    	top          SEL_FOCUSOUT

These messages permit the application to provide visual cues as to where the focus is.

If a widget has a focus child, then first an attempt is made to forward the keyboard event to that focus child. If the child handles the keyboard event then it returns 1 and we're done.

If a child is itself a composite, it will in turn try its focus child.

If the focus child of a composite did not handle the keyboard event then the composite will try to interpret the navigation keys (Tab/Backtab/Arrows). These are translated into SEL_FOCUS_NEXT, SEL_FOCUS_PREV, SEL_FOCUS_RIGHT, SEL_FOCUS_LEFT, SEL_FOCUS_DOWN, and SEL_FOCUS_UP messages, respectively.

If a composite successfully interprets the navigation key, i.e. manages to find a successor widget to set the focus on, then it returns 1. Otherwise it returns 0 and the next composite higher up can have a shot at interpreting the navigation keys.

I got the focus movement basically working (the mechanism); run groupbox and tab/backtab your way between all the buttons. Hitting space or return with focus on a button will now invoke it just as if you had used the mouse. Not all widgets properly cooperate with it yet. [Widgets which can accept the focus should return TRUE in their overload of canFocus() ].

The dispatch of keyboard events is now implemented. Here's how it works:

- Each widget has a focus, which indicates the current child that has the focus.
- When a key is pressed/released, it first gets sent to the shell widget.
- If the widget's focus variable has been set, it will first try to dispatch the event to the focused child.
- If the focus widget is not set, or if the focus widget didn't handle the key event, this widget's accelerator table will be checked [accelerator tables have not yet been implemented, but essentially it's a hash table that maps a keycode + modifiers (ALT/SHIFT/CNTL) to a direct message to an object].
- If the widget has an accelerator table, and the key/modifier combination is found, the key event will be dispatched to the object given in the table.
- If the widget does not have an accelerator table, or if there's no matching accelerator, the widget will proceed with ``default keyboard processing.''
- In default keyboard processing, the space and enter keys are reported to the focus widget as button activate messages; if there is no focus widget, or if the focus widget does not handle it, it returns FALSE.
- Also in default keyboard processing, the tab, backtab, and arrow keys are translated into focus movement messages. and resent to the widget itself. By resending these to itself, different widgets can perform different things, based on these messages (e.g. non-composite widgets do not handle focus change messages).
- When none of the above applies, the widgets keyboard message handler returns FALSE. At this point, its parent will have a crack at it.

This mechanism looks very complicated, but it's needed:

- A text widget inside some other widgets will certainly want to have a first crack at arrow keys, tabs, and its own accelerators.
- A matrix layout widget will want to handle the arrow keys intelligently. A menubar widget will deal differently with arrow keys.
- A shell widget, trying to move its focus forward, will cycle back to the first focusable child when it hits the end; repeated tabbing will get you back where you started.

Functions setFocus() and killFocus() work properly now. There's a difference between a widget being in the focus chain (down from the shell) v.s. actually having the keyboard focus: when you move your cursor over a window (or click-to focus, depending on your window manager), all widgets in the chain are notified that they now have the REAL focus. Conversely, when you move your cursor out of a window, they are notified they no longer have the REAL focus.

In a nutshell, when you add/remove items to/from List or TreeLists, when you add/remove children to/from Composites, flags will be set that indicate that a recalc() may be needed.

When the idle processing starts, this will then happen. Thus, you can add 1000's of items w/o any noticable slowdown. (It seems to improve performance by 2-3 orders of magnitude; previously, adding elements caused a torrent of events.

With the new system, recalc()'s are put off till the last minute. Unfortunately, this new mechanism can not stand alone. A similar mechanism is needed for repainting. In future, when you call update(), it will add a repaint rectangle or union the old repaint rectangle with the new one. Then it will repaint during idle processing. So it's a bit chaotic right now, but it should become VERY SPEEDY when it's all done.

Also, I'm afraid the messagebox is broken right now. This is due to the class hierarchy changes, and the new layout of FXTopWindow. CWW had some nice suggestions for improvements, but those have not yet been implemented.

layout() is now protected. recalc() will be also. I'm in the process of redesigning this mechanism.

I got the focus movement basically working (the mechanism); run groupbox and tab/backtab your way between all the buttons.

Hitting space or return with focus on a button will now invoke it just as if you had used the mouse.

Not all widgets properly cooperate with it yes. [Widgets which can accept the focus should return TRUE in their overload of canFocus() ].

The dispatch of keyboard events is now implemented. Here's how it works:

- Each widget has a focus, which indicates the current child that has the focus.,/li.
- When a key is pressed/released, it first gets sent to the shell widget.
- Each widget looks if it's focus has been set; if so, it tried to dispatch the key event to the focus widget.
- If the focus widget is not set, or if the focus widget didn't handle the key event, this widgets accelerator table will be checked [accelerator tables have not yet been implemented, but essentially it's a hash table that maps a keycode + modifiers (ALT/SHIFT/CTL...) to a direct message to an object].
- If the widget has an accelerator table, and the key/modifier combination is found, the key event will be dispatched to the object given in the table.
- If the widget does not have an accelerator table, or if there's no matching accelerator, the widget will proceed with ``default keyboard processing.''
- In default keyboard processing, the space and enter keys are reported to the focus widget (if there is one), layout() is now protected. recalc() will be also. I'm in the process of redesigning this mechanism.

In a nutshell, when you add/remove items to/from List or TreeLists, when you add/remove children to/from Composites, flags will be set that indicate that a recalc() may be needed.

When the idle processing starts, this will then happen. Thus, you can add 1000's of items w/o any noticable slowdown. (It seems to improve performance by 2-3 orders of magnitude; previously, adding elements caused a torrent of events.

With the new system, recalc()'s are put off till the last minute. Unfortunately, this new mechanism can not stand alone. A similar mechanism is needed for repainting. In future, when you call update(), it will add a repaint rectangle or union the old repaint rectangle with the new one. Then it will repaint during idle processing. So it's a bit chaotic right now, but it should become VERY SPEEDY when it's all done.

Also, I'm afraid the messagebox is broken right now. This is due to the class hierarchy changes, and the new layout of FXTopWindow. CWW had some nice suggestions for improvements, but those have not yet been implemented.

Copyright © 1997-2026 Jeroen van der Zijp