I'm using Key Down? and Key Up events to turn the keyboard into a series of switches for a behavioral experiment. For example, I want the user to push down Caps Lock with the left hand, Return with the right, then use the appropriate hand to do a specified task. By monitoring Key Down and Key Up events, I can capture the timing of the user's "button sequences" (to the accuracy of Window's clock).
Key Down? provides three indicators of what key is pressed -- Char, which is an I16 representation of the Ascii character (and hence can be "converted" easily into a string one could test, e.g. is this "A"?), VKey, an enum saying if the key is an Ascii character or a "special" key (such as Caps or Return), and ScanCode, which is another I16 that corresponds (somehow) to each key on the keyboard. There are also boolean indicators that can tell you if Ctrl, Shift, or Alt are being simultaneously pressed. Of these, the least "transparent" is ScanCode, as there is no obvious way (other than placing a comment on your code) to know that 58 corresponds to CapsLock.
Unfortunately, Key Up only provides ScanCode! So while I can write "nice" code that can more-or-less self-document that I'm testing for Caps Lock or Return (simply wire VKey to a Case statement, which will allow me to have a case labelled "Caps", pretty obvious, no?), I don't have such functionality with the Key Up event.
Suggestion -- add Char and VKey inputs to the Key Up event! This will make it "symmetrical" with respect to Key Down?, and will enable producing Key Up code that doesn't need to rely on "magic numbers" (Scan Codes) for specific keys.
Bob Schor
