I don't have any experience with this, but have you tried using
Quartz Event Services (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/QuartzEventServicesRef/
) to handle your keyboard events? The two functions I'm thinking of
are CGEventTapCallBack and CGEventKeyboardGetUnicodeString (which
hopefully wlll interpret events that are from other input sources).
Sam
On Jan 30, 2008, at 12:05 AM, Adam Zegelin wrote:
Hey,
I'm working on porting a Win32 game to Mac OS X. It has been
decided by higher up to start supporting unicode text input. The
platform implementation is required to pass a unichar to game engine
whenever a printable key is pressed (or inputed by some other
method, such as an input manager)
The game can run in a window (NSWindow + a NSOpenGLView) or
fullscreen (using CGL and CG) hence I can't rely on any methods of
text input that require a window.
Currently I override NSApplications' sendEvent method and attempt
to handle events myself. Any unhandled events are processed with
[super sendEvent:event]. My event handler is implemented in my
controller object. It checks if the keyWindow is the game window,
otherwise I don't handle the event. If the game is fullscreen, I
always handle the event.
If the event is a key up/down and is not a repeat, I forward it
onto the game engine for processing as a key up or down message
(respectively). These messages contain the raw keycode translated
into an engine specific code.
Now here comes my problem: I need to send unicode input messages to
the game engine if the key(s) pressed are in-fact printable. For
example:
Escape key (non-printable): KeyDown...KeyUp
"A" key: KeyDown...unicode input...(unicode input... — if the
user is holding down the key)...KeyUp
I can do single keys fine, I just send the [[event characters]
characterAtIndex:0] off to the game engine. But things composite
characters like option-e + e (é) do not work. [[event characters]
characterAtIndex:0] just returns "e". Non-composite keys like option-
w (∑) do work correctly.
Also, since I'm only inspecting the event stream, other systems of
input such as the Character Palette don't work with the application.
I've tried making my controller a subclass of NSResponder and
calling interpretKeyEvents: with the keyDown event I receive and
then implementing insertText:. Again, this only catches non-
composite characters and does not support other input methods.
I've read the documentation over and over and unless I'm missing
something cannot locate any information that explains how to do
input without a window and a responder chain. I've also tried google
without any luck. Again, this needs to support fullscreen and
windowed mode. And I'd prefer to not use some kludge like making a
window fullscreen.
I'm developing with Xcode 3 and Cocoa (obviously), and whatever
method I use needs to support 10.4 minimum.
Any suggestions?
Regards,
Adam
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