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Tracking issue: improve Key input #3653

@emilk

Description

@emilk

The keyboard input in egui is limited in a couple of ways:

  • Lots of keys missing from Event::Key
  • We don't report the super/meta modifier key
  • We don't report modifier key presses (just their state)
  • Physical keys not reported on the eframe web backend
  • KeyboardShortcut should ignore shift and alt keys for logical keys (e.g. Ctrl Plus may require pressing shift on some keyboards). See The keyboard shortcut of zoom in does not work on the JIS keyboard #3626 for more

How can I help?

  • Look at the code for egui::Key and follow the instructions there for adding new keys
  • Investigate if we can get physical keycode on web

Requested keys

Prioir art

Relevant issues

Physical vs Logical keys

Consider someone owning a physical QWERTY keyboard:
qwerty

However, they have remapped it to use Dvorak (perhaps even repainting the text on their keyboard):
dvorak

If they start hitting Caps Lock and then moving to the left, the keys they will be hitting will be

  • physical (qwerty): CapsLock, A, S, D, F, …
  • logical (Dvorak): CapsLock, A, O, E, U …

The logical keys makes sense for most keyboard shortcuts - if you say "Press Cmd+S to save" in your UI, the user will be looking for the logical key "S"
The physical keys are mostly useful for games, where e.g. te physical WSAD on QWERTY moves a character, no matter what the users keymap is.

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