Alt-Esc works, why can't we pass Alt-Tab to the WM?

Harold L Hunt II huntharo@msu.edu
Mon Jul 7 03:00:00 GMT 2003


Igor,

Huh... well, if it requires a keyboard hook then it really is kinda 
complex to add this "Alt-Tab" catching behavior.

As far as adding a keyboard/mouse hook in general, I am kinda stuck on 
that one.  I can't decide if it is better to build a small DLL with 
Visual Studio with a defined interface that XWin.exe uses (if it can 
load the DLL), or if it is better (or even a good idea) to try to build 
a small hook DLL with MinGW.  Any comments?

Harold

Igor Pechtchanski wrote:

> On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Sam Edge wrote:
> 
> 
>>Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu> wrote in <Pine.GSO.4.44.0307021924090.17919-100000@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
>>in gmane.os.cygwin.xfree on Wed, 2 Jul 2003 19:26:44 -0400 (EDT):
>>
>>
>>>On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>>>
>>>>There is the possibility that Alt+Tab can only be trapped on NT-based
>>>>OSes, but that isn't much more to worry about.
>>
>>>Win98, at least, has a Misc tab in shortcut properties, that lists Windows
>>>shortcut keys to ignore (let the application handle).  Alt-Tab is one of
>>>them.  Thus, you could instruct the users set up a shortcut to XWin.exe
>>>and let it handle Alt-Tab, even if XWin.exe can't capture it itself.
>>>P.S. I'm not sure Win95/ME have this feature.
>>
>>I think you'll find that the Misc property page is only available with
>>shortcuts to DOS-mode applications. Windows-native executables like
>>XWin.exe don't have it.
> 
> 
> Yes, you're right.  However, after some more digging, it seems that
> keyboard hooks (perhaps similar to what Harold suggested earlier?) *can*
> be used on Win9x to intercept hotkeys (e.g., Alt-Tab) in Win32 apps.  I
> haven't found the exact instructions on MSDN, though...
> 	Igor



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