Global Keyboard Shortcuts

In guiSET you can tell Frame to call your method when a certain keyboard combination is pressed by the user. A shortcut consists of a number of so-called modifiers (Ctrl, Shift,Alt) and a key, for example A.

To represent shortcuts in guiSET there is a Shortcut class (also see Reference). The constructor takes either a char as key and three booleans for Ctrl/Shift/Alt or a char as key and an arbitrary number of modifiers.

Examples for first version:

Examples for second version:

Now we can create a shortcut and register it to Frame. 

Frame f;

void setup() {
    f = new Frame(this);
    f.registerShortcut(new Shortcut('M', CONTROL), "printStuff");
}
void draw() {}
void printStuff() {
    println("User has pressed Ctrl+M");
}

Every time you press Ctrl+M now, printStuff() is called. There is one exception though:

Strong Shortcuts

If you have a textbox in your sketch and the user has focused it (cursor blinks and you can enter input), then shortcuts will not be checked for by default. All input goes solely to the textbox. This makes sense if you have a shortcut for E that triggers for example saving a file. But in a bigger sketch you probably don't want to save the file every time the user hits 'e' while typing. Moreover, textboxes have their own Ctrl+C, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+X shortcuts which might conflict with shortcuts you want to implement.

If you need the shortcut to be triggered anyway, you can tell Frame it should be strong by calling f.registerShortcut(new Shortcut('M', CONTROL), "printStuff", this, true);. The third parameter is just for specifying the object that implements you callback method "printStuff" (mostly that is the sketch itself, so write this). The fourth parameter is a boolean for the strong property we just discussed. Default is false.