[tab] key navigation?

[granx]

Hi,
Is hitting the tab key supposed to move from one subwindow to the next? If so, what type of Window do I need to see this effect?

Also, will hitting tab move between selected windows and will hitting the space bar or enter key trigger that window? Thanks, -granx

[CrazyEddie]

There is currently no keyboard navigation interface at all. ChrisKang started some work on this, and there is a patch on the tracker, though at the time I looked at it originally, I had a hard time fathoming it out.

There are ways of 'faking' this, though nothing is really set up for it at the moment - so anything you implement in your app to do this will be a bit hacky (basically it consists of taking key inputs and generating fake mouse inputs from them).

[granx]

Well,
I am still learning about all the different layout types, but I would expect a Window that was created with the intention to hold child Windows, would know how to cycle through them. I guess an example would be a widget holding several checkbox widgets. When a checkbox receives a 'tab' character in the onKeyDown handler, then it should probably inform the parent window to advance its 'selected' child widget. Does this sound possible? Unfortunately, that parent would need to support some "advanceSelectedChild" function, but I think this is acceptable. What say you?
-granx

[CrazyEddie]

In CEGUI any window can act as a container, so this functionality should be in the base Window class.

What is needed is basically two things; first a 'tab stop' field (plus getter/setter/property), and second a fix to maintain static index values for child widgets. Once you have this in place, then you just need to detect the tab key and skip to the next child window that has the 'tab stop' property set (wrapping around to index 0 as needed), and activating that window.

The only thing is, at the moment, almost none of the widgets have rendering to indicate when they're the active widget - so there's no way to see "where you are".

Other key stuff, like space to push a button, would need to be implemented on a per-widget basis.

[Rackle]

Tab Order