Enable arrow keys

I am working on a program that is basically finished, all but 2 tabstops are set to False so I can only tab between 2 TButtons. The issue that I have is when I press the space bar to operate 1 button the tabstops are set to 4 TRadioButtons that I want to tab between then pressing the space-bar again leaves to the next tabstop.

Someone sent me the following code to only allow the Tab and Space keys.

procedure TForm1.FormKeyDown(Sender: TObject; var Key: Word;
Shift: TShiftState);
begin
// Only allow tab & space keys to be forwarded to BetweenButton
if self.ActiveControl = BetweenButton then
if not (Key in [VK_TAB, VK_SPACE]) then
Key := 0;
end;

The following code is supposed to allow the arrow keys to be enabled but I cant seem to get them working.

procedure TForm1.DialogKey(var Msg: TWMKey);
begin
// Make sure the OnKeyDown handler is called for arrow keys
case Msg.CharCode of
VK_DOWN,
VK_UP,
VK_RIGHT,
VK_LEFT : if Assigned(onKeyDown) then onKeyDown(Self, Msg.CharCode, KeyDataToShiftState(Msg.KeyData));
else
inherited
end;
end;

Can someone please help me solve my problems.

Many thanks
Steve

Hi,
First I couldn't exaclly understand the explanation of your program. Can you try explain it better especially the part when you press the space bar. Otherwise about the code you have been posted I tried this. I found it here It works fine for me. So the DialogKey prccedure works fine. About your FormKeyDown procedure. With this you accept only the tab or the spacebar key. So when you call this procedure from DialogKey with the pressing of the arrows you just skip them in the FormKeyDown procedure. Try to put them in the condition something like this I think this sould be the way but again I didn't understand the hole idea of your program.

Dimiter.

Thanks for your reply, I will try to explain better this time.

The form is as follows, the top of the form there are two TButtons, pressing the tab key allows one to move between the 2 and selected by pressing the spacebar. On pressing the spacebar the cursor drops below to 4 TRadioButtons that I need to select by using the tab key and executing by pressing the spacebar. From there the cursor drops again to a TDateTimePicker on the left allowing one to select a date from, tabbing to the TDateTimePicker on the right allowing one to select a date to. From there tabbing to a final TButton to calculate the date difference.

Everything is working as expected, but for the 4 TRadioButtons, the 2 top TButtons, the 2 TDateTimePickers and the Calculate TButton can all be moved to by using the tab key and selected by pressing the spacebar, but I cannot move between the 4 TRadioButtons. I hope this explains the form layout and what I am trying to accomplice.

As I am a new user I cannot put a link here, but if you are kind enough to email me then I would send you the link to show you an avi explaining in full.

kindest regards
Steve

Sorry, just realised a mistake, it should be as follows;

The form is as follows, the top of the form there are two TButtons, pressing the tab key allows one to move between the 2 and selecting by pressing the spacebar. On pressing the spacebar the cursor drops below to 4 TRadioButtons that I need to select by using the arrow keys and once selected pressing the spacebar makes it jump to the next section. From there the cursor drops again to a TDateTimePicker on the left allowing one to select a date from, tabbing to the TDateTimePicker on the right allowing one to select a date to. From there tabbing to a final TButton to calculate the date difference.

Everything is working as expected, but for the 4 TRadioButtons, the 2 top TButtons, the 2 TDateTimePickers and the Calculate TButton can all be moved to by using the tab key and selected by pressing the spacebar, but I cannot move between the 4 TRadioButtons. I hope this explains the form layout and what I am trying to accomplice.

As I am a new user to this forum I cannot put a link here, but if you are kind enough to email me then I would send you the link to show you an avi explaining in full.

kindest regards
Steve

P.S. The reason for the way I want it to work is that I am designing it for a blind user.

Hi,
First may be because you're new in the forum you don't know there is a Edit post button there is no need to repost
Now about the project now your idea is a lot clearer. So are you using 4 TRadioButtons? If so try with TRadioGroup. In the Items property you can add as many radiobuttons that you want. There you can navigate through the radiobuttons with the arrows without any code.

Dimiter

Hi Dimiter, Thanks you for your reply, yes I now know I can edit posts, but I only realised after I resubmitted it, sorry.

I tried a TRadioGroup and still cannot move using the arrow keys, I suppose because I have the following code so only the Tab key and Spacebar is used, ie;

procedure TForm1.FormKeyDown(Sender: TObject; var Key: Word;
Shift: TShiftState);
begin
// Only allow tab & space keys to be forwarded to BetweenButton
if self.ActiveControl = BetweenButton then
if not (Key in [VK_TAB, VK_SPACE] ) then
Key := 0;
end;

I would have to somehow make the arrow keys enabled again while only using the Radio Buttons

Regards
Steve

Hi,
I think you're right. You will have to think some kind of logic about when you are in the radiogroup, so you will have to accept only the arrows and all other cases when you will accept only enter and space bar. Although I have a problem setting the focus on the radiogroup. If a switch it wirh Tab it's ok arrows work, but if I try to make it with code like this radiogroup.SetFocus you can't work with the arrows. So I came up with another idea don't switch the focus on the radiobuttons after pressing the first button with space bar just set some boolean varaible to true and check it in the DialogKey method then on the FormKeyDown make it something like that

Try both ways and see which you find better


Dimiter

I seem to be missing something.
What is BetweenButton?

The code already restricts the special action to when this object has focus,
so I am not sure why it affects the TRadioGroup or any other components.

What happens if you remove the DialogKey code?

Delphi Programming forum discussing Delphi related topics including Kylix very nice frnd thanks