KeyboardHelper

Adds support for sequence of gestures and keyboard events to WPF controls that are not TextBox.

MultiKeyGesture

The MultiKeyGesture class is a replacement for KeyGesture when a sequence of keys is needed, rather than just one key pressed. For example, the sequence Ctrl+B, T is used in Visual Studio to toggle a bookmark. There is no support for this feature in the .NET KeyGesture class, but you can do it with MultiKeyGesture.

To use this class, proceed as follow:

• Add the KeyboardHelper assembly to your project.
• Add the following line in the header of your Xaml file:
  xmlns:kh="clr-namespace:KeyboardHelper.Xaml;assembly=KeyboardHelper"
• In the rest of the xaml file, whenever you would write Gesture="...", write Gesture="{kh:MultiKeyGesture ...}" instead.

Note that kh: is a prefix I chose for this example. You can change it if you want.

Complete example:

<UserControl x:Class="Test.MyControl"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:kh="clr-namespace:KeyboardHelper.Xaml;assembly=KeyboardHelper">
    <UserControl.InputBindings>
        <KeyBinding Command="EditingCommands.Delete" Gesture="{kh:MultiKeyGesture Ctrl+D}"/>
        <KeyBinding Command="EditingCommands.ToggleInsert" Gesture="{kh:MultiKeyGesture Ctrl+E, W}"/>
        <KeyBinding Command="EditingCommands.Backspace" Gesture="{kh:MultiKeyGesture Ctrl+F, Ctrl+X}"/>
    </UserControl.InputBindings>
    <Grid/>
</UserControl>

Receiving keyboard events as characters

.NET provides keyboard events such as KeyDown and KeyUp, but handling them to parse characters the same way a TextBox control would is a little tricky.

To help with that, you can create a KeyboardManager object, associated to your control, and register a handler for the CharacterKey event. This event will be triggered every time a character is obtained from the keyboard:

• Normally, like when pressing the a key.
• With composed keys, for example by pressing the ^ and a keys on a French keyboard, resulting in the â character.
• With unicode character types using the Alt key and the numpad. For example, typing 6 and 4 on the numpad while holding the Alt key down, then releasing it, will result in the @ character.

Receiving move keys as events

You can register commands for all combinations of the Left, Right, Up, Down, PageUp, PageDown, Home and End keys with Ctrl and Shift, but it's a lot of events handlers to write and maintain. Instead, you can register a handler for the MoveKey event of the KeyboardManager class, and process all of them in a central place.