Creating keyboard shortcuts
lazarus / 10-Designer

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cybersmyth · 2011-04-05 14:36

How do you go about creating a keyboard shortcut? I have a "Start"
button, I'd like the user to be able to execute it with ctrl+s rather
than just clicking on it.

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Leledumbo · 2011-04-05 17:54

Hmm... TButton doesn't seem to have Shortcut property, but it has
Action property where its instance has Shortcut property. So you have
to start designing your apps correctly (read: remove redundant code),
by forwarding all requests (menus, buttons, etc) through a TAction of
TActionList.

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Blaazen · 2011-04-05 21:24

Acceleration keys are not enough?

Caption:='&Start';

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typo · 2011-04-05 21:43

Code: [Select]// KeyPreview on
procedure TForm1.FormKeyDown(Sender: TObject; var Key: Word; Shift:
TShiftState);
begin
  if (Key = LCLType.VK_S) and (ssCtrl in Shift) then
    ButtonStartClick(Sender);
end;

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cybersmyth · 2011-04-06 13:21

The FormKeyDown method worked great after a quick tweak. Apparently
you have to have the form property for "KeyPreview" set to true.
Otherwise each object will to capture the keyboard.

Thanks guys!

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eny · 2011-04-06 19:38

Now that you've done it the hard way, you could try leledumbo's
approach and remove all redundant code:
- Drop a TActionList op the form.
- Add a new action to the actionlist that performs the requested
action in the OnExecute method.
- Set Ctrl-s as the shortcut key for this action via the Object
Inspector.
- Assign this action to the Start button as well.

Configuration over programming!