Sending Keyboard Events to Background Window

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Chris Share - 23 Oct 2007 03:46 GMT

Hi,

I'm developing an application that consists of three windows
(JFrames). Only one of the JFrames handles keyboard input.

At present, if I move one of the other JFrames to the front the
keyboard control stops. I assume that the front JFrame is getting the
keyboard focus.

I'd like to be able to move one of the other JFrames to the front but
still send the key commands to the back window.

How can I do this?

I've tried using frame.setFocusable(false); however this doesn't seem
to make any difference.

Cheers,

Chris

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Andrew Thompson - 23 Oct 2007 04:23 GMT

...

>I'm developing an application that consists of three windows
>(JFrames). Only one of the JFrames handles keyboard input.
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>I'd like to be able to move one of the other JFrames to the front but
>still send the key commands to the back window.

Why? What would this ability offer to me the end user
(besides being very confusing)?

>How can I do this?

Try adding the first frame to the second frame's KeyListener.

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Andrew Thompson
http://www.athompson.info/andrew/

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Chris Share - 23 Oct 2007 05:20 GMT

> Why? What would this ability offer to me the end user
> (besides being very confusing)?

The app displays the same data in various formats (2D, 3D, etc.). To
the user, it actually doesn't matter which window is at the front, as
long as the keyboard controls still function.

Cheers,

Chris

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Andrew Thompson - 23 Oct 2007 09:17 GMT

>> Why? What would this ability offer to me the end user
>> (besides being very confusing)?
>
>The app displays the same data in various formats (2D, 3D, etc.). To
>the user, it actually doesn't matter which window is at the front, as
>long as the keyboard controls still function.

(slaps forehead) Keyboard shortcuts and accelerators!
Of course, how silly of me to forget.

I'd be interested to hear how you go with my suggestion.

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Andrew Thompson
http://www.athompson.info/andrew/

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G. Garrett Campbell - 23 Oct 2007 14:50 GMT

Create one keylistener class and add it to all the windows.

>> Why? What would this ability offer to me the end user
>> (besides being very confusing)?
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> Chris

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Bent C Dalager - 23 Oct 2007 15:04 GMT

>Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
>How can I do this?

If you have your own custom key listeners already, then attach them to
all the frames rather than just one of them. If, on the other hand,
you just want the standard Swing stuff to happen, but happen to a
non-focused frame, you could experiment with the following.

I think I have seen various hackish ways of redirecting events in
Swing code that would pass events to different components by calling
e.g. processKeyEvent on them. You might override
JFrame.processKeyEvent on the frames that are not to handle key
presses and implement them along the lines of
processKeyEvent(KeyEvent e) { mainFrame.processKeyEvent(e); }

I don't know if you would have to massage the KeyEvent before passing
it on in this manner though.

Results may vary :-)

(Of course, there must be a better way to do this - I just can't think
of one atm ...)

Cheers,
Bent D

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Bent Dalager - bcd@pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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Sending Keyboard Events to Background Window

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