Fixed: gfx.getchar() - Bugs AltGr still a problem...

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

I've found some issues with gfx.getchar.

When hitting F10, it will return the code twice, unlike all other keys, where it returns the code once, waits a moment before returning the second keystroke.
The following code reproduces it on Reaper 5.941 and Reaper 5.96 sucessfully.

I'm using Windows 7Pro, with a naked Reaper 5.96 and SWS installed.

gfx.init()
function main()
  A=gfx.getchar()
  if A>=1 then reaper.ShowConsoleMsg(A.."\n") end
  if A~=-1 then reaper.defer(main) end
end

main()

There's also an issue with the Euro-currency symbol €
This returns two codes, 261 and 128. Is this intentional? Are there other characters that can be returned that way?

[Justin]

Looking into this. For the euro symbol, what keyboard layout are you using?

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

German(Germany) layout.

Oh, it can't be typed into the IDE neither, so I need to read it from the outside to show it in drawstr-functions currently...

[Justin]

Thanks. The F10 issue was an easy fix, the euro key, a lot more difficult, haven't figured it out yet (alt-gr handling on Windows is a mystery to me at the moment ... Oddly other alt-gr combinations seem to work here, hmph.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

I hope, you can get this working at some point

BTW, is there any limitation in gfx-functions in regards of codepages? Or can I use UTF8, UTF16 and so on without a problem(with setting an appropriate font first)?

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

New reports about the alt-gr issue can be found here:

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...3&postcount=36

Seems like it's on french keymaps too.
gfx.getchar seems to return two characters in these cases, not one unlike most of the others.

[heda]

AltGr is the combination of Ctrl+Alt so AltGr+E for € symbol, you can also use Ctrl+Alt+E
maybe that gives a hint, however, Ctrl+E is 5 and Alt+E is 325
not 261 and 128, so I don't know.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

I have the suspicion, that the € is stored as an UTF16-character and therefore returns two numbers.
Could this be a logical assumption? I have no idea really about the whole Unicode-stuff...

[chrisfr]

I tried to hack a dirty fix :

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...5&postcount=43

I'm not sure how it can behave on a non french keyboard, and unfortunately that does not help for the € sign...

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

I tried a similar approach back then when trying to get the € symbol to work.
But this only worked some of the time, not always. I never found out, why that was.
I even went so far to insert it from another file but it failed parts of the time.

I somehow suspected an UTF-encoding problem. Means, the lua-file must be stored somehow as UTF-encoded file otherwise the script as well as the returns by gfx.getchar and the displaying by gfx.drawstr wouldn't work properly.
I never managed to confirm that theory and never managed to actually produce a script, that shows that behavior and one that doesn't.
That was where I left the bug-hunting back then...

[Justin]

The issue isn't a UTF one, it has to do with the complex handling of multi-key sequences and dead keys, which is a huge can of worms.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Is there something we could we could do to fish for some helpful things with the worms(to stay within this metaphor )?

[vitalker]

Still here.

[BartR]

Here I find the topic Mespotine told me yesterday. Yes it still here.


Facts:
using CTRL+ALT or AltGr, it's not different. Strange things occurs

On my Belgian Keyboard, the "=" key is the same "~" and "+". To get "~" I have to use AltGr+ThatKey or CTRL+ALT+ThatKey
While the "+" = SHIFT+ThatKey

here what I get:

First time digiting: =
Then pressing any other key: ~


OR

First time digiting: =
Second time digiting: ==~~

If I remove the "IF" condition that limits the characters to the pure ANSI ones, at least I can enter accented letters.

However the ALTGR works (badly) also within the limitations of the c >=0x20 and c<=0x7E

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Maybe it's better, if we would get a gfx.getchar2-function, which simply returns the typed character, depending on the currently used keymap.
With an additional boolean retval, which signals, if a character is utf8-only, so we can use Lua's utf8-functions to deal with them.

This number-thing of gfx.getchar is too much of a hassle for non-english-keymap users and maybe it's a good idea to move to something properly instead, that could also support chinese characters, russian characters, emojis, etc.
This is a real mess currently and all possible hacks we try introduce worse edgecases.

So maybe, gfx.getchar is simply a dead horse we're riding.

[BartR]

Originally Posted by Meo-Ada Mespotine

Maybe it's better, if we would get a gfx.getchar2-function, which simply returns the typed character, depending on the currently used keymap.
With an additional boolean retval, which signals, if a character is utf8-only, so we can use Lua's utf8-functions to deal with them.

This number-thing of gfx.getchar is too much of a hassle for non-english-keymap users and maybe it's a good idea to move to something properly instead, that could also support chinese characters, russian characters, emojis, etc.
This is a real mess currently and all possible hacks we try introduce worse edgecases.

So maybe, gfx.getchar is simply a dead horse we're riding.

Excellent. I was talking right about this solution with another Studio Owner. I was thinking to a thing like gfx.GetCharEx(), so any compatibility issue wth the past, can be left.

[BartR]

Meo-Ada asked me from this post https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=267149 to write here.

I don't use ALT GR at all since my keyboard is Belgian (Dutch) and has accents already. No one of these keys is working.



BTW: beside this, today I noticed that there still some buggy behavior also in the exporting importing file. But it will be argument for another post