Detecting KeyUp events

Question

Is there a way to detect when a key is released, similar to

EventHandler[InputField[], {"KeyDown", "k"} :> Print["k pressed"]]

It seems such detection isn't available at first glance, perhaps it can be achieved some other way?

Alternatively is there a way to detect which keys are currently pressed? I know that;

CurrentValue["ModifierKeys"] 

Works for shift, ctrl and such, but I can't seem to figure out how to get a list of regular keys being pressed.

Edit: CurrentValue["EventKey"] does not seem to work for this purpose as it only detects keydown events, thus you cannot do something like the following which detects shift-up

shiftDown = False;
Dynamic[
If[MemberQ[CurrentValue["ModifierKeys"], "Shift"], (shiftDown = True;), 
      If[shiftDown, (shiftDown = False; Print["Shift up code"])]
    ]
]

link to MathGroup post

Answer 1

To answer the second part of your question, you can use CurrentValue["EventKey"] to get the current key that is being pressed. Modifying your example above:

EventHandler[InputField[], "KeyDown" :> Print[CurrentValue["EventKey"]]]

Answer 2

Edit: Updated to register any key presses

Whenever an EventHandler does not handle something continuously, one can set up a listener manually using scheduled tasks. Here, the task task is initiated when the InputField is displayed, that scans the state of the Shift key. You can put whatever code you want to be evaluated on keypress in the update function.

DynamicModule[{task, pressed = {}, on = False, last, time, modNew, modOld, event = {}, 
  mods = {"AltKey", "CommandKey", "ControlKey", "OptionKey", "ShiftKey"}},
 Column@{
   Dynamic@pressed,
   EventHandler[
    InputField[], {"KeyDown" :> (If[! on, on = True]; last = SessionTime[];
                                 event = CurrentValue@"EventKey")}, 
    PassEventsDown -> True]
   },
 Initialization :> (
   modOld = False /@ mods;
   If[FreeQ[ScheduledTasks[], task], task = RunScheduledTask[
      time = SessionTime[];
      modNew = CurrentValue /@ mods;
      If[modNew =!= modOld, pressed = Pick[mods, modOld]];
      If[on && time - last > .55, on = False; pressed = {event}];
      modOld = modNew,
      .05]];
   ),
 Deinitialization :> If[MemberQ[ScheduledTasks[], task], RemoveScheduledTask@task]
 ]

Image shows the update due to successive key presses of any key (that can be registered):

For control keys, the method is simply checking CurrentValue-s while the task is running. The hard part is to get the letter/digit/punctuation keys to be registered. For those, the code measures the time between successive updates (time and last) which are calculated while the (non-control-)key is held pressed. Since Windows uses a 0.5 sec time delay before starting to flood-type when a key is pressed, one has to wait at least the same amount of time before being able to tell whether the key was released or it is still pressed and continuous typing is about to start. Thus registering the release of letter-keys can only happen when enough time (.55 sec) has been spent since the last update.

Since the scheduled task should run in the background as long as the InputField is on screen, there should be a method to destroy it only when the InputField is destroyed, hence the Deinitialization code.

Answer 3

This has been bugging non stop so I wanted to create a somewhat viable solution for Windows using autohotkey.

Run the following as an Administrator in autohotkey on Windows.

down=0

e::
    if(down=0){
      FileDelete, C:\Test.txt
      FileAppend, Down.`n, C:\Test.txt
      down=1
    }
return

e Up::
      Send e
      FileDelete, C:\Test.txt
      FileAppend, Up.`n, C:\Test.txt
      down=0
return

Then create the following

Needs["NETLink`"];
InstallNET[];

ShowNETConsole["stdout"];
LoadNETType["System.Console"];
Console`Out@WriteLine["Hello from .NET"];

WatchFile[file_String, fun_] := 
  Module[{time, time2, w, e}, 
   w = NETNew["System.IO.FileSystemWatcher"];
   LoadNETType["System.IO.NotifyFilters"];
   LoadNETType["System.IO.File"];
   w@Path = FileNameJoin@Drop[FileNameSplit[file], -1];
   w@NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters`LastWrite;
   w@Filter = Last@FileNameSplit[file];
   e = AddEventHandler[w@Changed, myHandler];
   content = Import[file, "Plaintext"]; 
   myHandler[source_, e_] := (Catch[
      content2 = Import[file, "Plaintext"];
      If[content != content2, fun[source, e, content2];];
      content = content2;
      ]
     );
   w@EnableRaisingEvents = True;
   Return[{w, e}];];
WatchFile["C:\\Test.txt", Function[{w, e, content2},
  var = content2
  ]]
EventHandler[Dynamic@var, {"KeyDown" :> (Null;)}]

It will essentially allow the e key to detect when it is up and down.

Answer 4

You can try using NotebookEventActions see the given example in an other subject.

displaying = True;

SetOptions[EvaluationNotebook[], 
 NotebookEventActions :> {{"KeyDown", "k"} :> (If[! displaying, 
      Print["k press"]]), 
   "DownArrowKeyDown" :> (If[! displaying, Print["down press"]]), 
   "MouseClicked" :> (If[displaying, displaying = False])}]

the related thread Make EventHandler work for clicks and keys in a Dynamic display

Answer 5

One rather drastic solution is to use LibraryLink to just get the keyboard state directly from the operating system, and then deploy a high-frequency ScheduledTask to poll the keyboard state. I do this on Windows using C.

Here's a minimal working example, showing how to get the keyboard state into the kernel as a ByteArray, and then using EventHandler to change the color of a graphic when a certain key is pressed down, and to change it back as soon as the key is released.

In a separate file, library.c:

#include "WolframLibrary.h" 
#include "WolframNumericArrayLibrary.h"
#include <Windows.h>
#include <string.h> 

DLLEXPORT int getKeyboardState(WolframLibraryData libData, mint Argc, MArgument *Args, MArgument Res){
    GetKeyState(0);
    BYTE keyboardState[256] = {0};
    if (GetKeyboardState(keyboardState)){
        MNumericArray keyboardByteArray;
        const mint length = 256;
        
        if (libData->numericarrayLibraryFunctions->MNumericArray_new(MNumericArray_Type_UBit8, 1, &length, &keyboardByteArray)) {
            return LIBRARY_FUNCTION_ERROR;
        }
       
        memcpy((uint8_t*) libData->numericarrayLibraryFunctions->MNumericArray_getData(keyboardByteArray), keyboardState, 256);
        MArgument_setMNumericArray(Res, keyboardByteArray);
        return LIBRARY_NO_ERROR;

    } else {
        return LIBRARY_FUNCTION_ERROR;
    }
}

I use CCompilerDriver to compile this into a DLL, and then I load the function into the kernel and make some appropriate definitions.

<<CCompilerDriver`

CreateLibrary[
 File@"library.c", 
 "library.dll",
 "Libraries" -> {"User32.lib"},
 "Language" -> "C"
]

With[
 {func =
   LibraryFunctionLoad[
    File@"library.dll",
    "getKeyboardState",
    {}, ByteArray
    ]
  },
 keyboard[] := func[];
 keyboard[vk_Integer] := func[][[vk + 1]]
]

Now you can use this function in a ScheduledTask to poll the state a particular key.

color=Black;
w$pressed=.

EventHandler[
 Graphics[
  {Dynamic@color, Rectangle[],
   White, Arrow@{
     {.5, .5},
     Dynamic@MousePosition["Graphics", {.5, .5}]}
   }],
 {{"KeyDown", "w"} :>
   If[! TrueQ@w$pressed, (w$pressed = True;
     color = Purple;
     task = SessionSubmit@ScheduledTask[
        If[(keyboard[87]~Quotient~128) == 0,
         (TaskRemove@task;
          w$pressed = False;
          color = Black
          )], 1/100])]
  }
 ]

Select the resulting Graphics cell, and you'll see that the background color changes to purple as soon as the W key is pressed, and changes back again as soon as it's let go. Here's a GIF demonstrating: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQx5B.jpg

Unfortunately, this solution is specific to Windows, but I believe it should be easy to generalize this example.