Emulating 'delete' key-press from context menu - mfc

I added a context menu to a MFC CRichEditCtrl, it includes a delete option which does:
ReplaceSel("",TRUE);
It appears to work but when I look at the undo log, it's not the same... we end up with characters being lost at the end of the sequence.
Any ideas how I can make my code be the same as what happens when you press DELETE? Or even reuse that default functionality?

SetFocus to edit window, and then keybd_event of delete key?
Or see if a WM_COMMAND message is triggered when the del key is hit and send the same message. You could have a look at their resources (using ResHacker or the like) and see if the DEL key is an accelerator for an existing WM_COMMAND message, or just use SpyXX.

Related

How to prevent ENTER Key on Buttons

I have a CFormView Dialog with Buttons to send commands for a hardware I/O.
I the user accidentally click the enter key, the command is executed. (the last button one, that has the focus).
How do you solve this in the correct way?
The way ist to use PreTranslateMessage. CHeck for WM_KEYDOWN and VK_ENTER. Ignore it or do whatever you want.
Background: CFormView::PreTranslateMessage later calls PreTranslateInput and this finally calls IsDialogMessage and this functions translates the Enter key to execute the default dialog button.

Calling SendInput() results in unexpected behaviour

Calling SendInput to simulate pressing down left click appears to be executed after code written below said call to SendInput is executed.
I made a listbox and I want right click to select items from the list box so I decided to make the message WM_CONTEXTMENU call SendInput to simulate a left click immediately before opening a context menu, but I believe the context menu is popping up before the left click occurs, resulting in the left click clicking the edge of the context menu (which does nothing).
Adding MessageBox(0,0,0,0); right in between the call to SendInput and the creation of the popup menu results in the left click successfully occurring and selecting an item, this is the behaviour I expected and desire. Strangely calling Sleep(1000) after the call to SendInput delays the program but doesn't cause the SendInput to behave as expected.
EDIT: Yes I know one solution to my problem is to select it using LB_SETSEL, but I'm partially doing this for learning purposes and if I run into a similar problem using SendInput I want to know how to solve it, so please help me resolve this specific bug.
SendInput() merely injects keystrokes into the keyboard's input buffer and then exits immediately, letting your app do other things while Windows handles the keystrokes in the background as if the user had typed them manually. That is not the solution to your problem.
In your WM_CONTEXTMENU handler, simply send a LB_SETCURSEL message (for a single-select ListBox) or a LB_SETSEL message (for a multi-select ListBox) directly to the ListBox's HWND to select the desired list item(s) before then displaying your popup menu.

Keyboard messages from child controls

I am currently developing a user interface DLL that uses the WIN32 API. The DLL must work for numerous platforms, XP, WIN CE, etc. I have managed to incorporate docking, anchoring and so on but appear to have a problem regarding owner-drawn buttons. I can draw the button's correct state, focus, clicked, default. However, I cannot receive key notifications. I specifically want to perform a click operation on a button that currently has focus, should the user press enter.
Note that I am using a windows message loop rather than a dialog message loop. I use windows hooks to hook into the window creation and set the user data to 'point' to my control instance. If I test for WM_KEYDOWN in the main message loop I can get a handle to my button control instance and could forward the message to the relevant control. Unfortunately, I am dealing with a lot of legacy code and this may not be an ideal solution.
So, my question is what is the best way forward. Is subclassing the button control's window procedure a viable option or is there an easier way?
Many thanks in advance.
The comments above are correct. The button with focus should be getting the key messages. But buttons don't (by themselves) respond to Enter--they respond to Space. It sounds like what you're missing is the typical dialog keyboard navigation, like Tab key moving the focus and Enter activating the "default" button.
If you've got a typical Windows message pump, and you want the keyboard behavior normally associated with dialogs, then you need to use the IsDialogMessage API in your message loop. This means your window is essentially a "modeless dialog".
Looks like standard window proc subclassing should do the trick. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms633591(v=vs.85).aspx for details.

Win32 API GetMessage()

I want to change the default behaviour of a combobox (c++, win32 api). I make the combobox drop down when something is entered in its edit control I want to avoid the default behaviour that the combobox searches for the first match in the list, selects it, and enters the selected string into the edit control. Can I suppress this behaviour by catching the respective (LB_SETCURSEL etc.) messages out of the message queue myself with GetMessage()?
Does anyone habe a different idea of how to do it?
Greets
Michbeck
You likely want to implement Window subclassing. This allows you to insert your own WndProc function into the combobox control that gets called before the control's own WndProc is called. You can filter out (and drop) window messages you don't want the control to get.
I'm not booted into my windows partition right now to run Spy++ on a combobox to see what messages it actually receives. My guess is that you want to filter out WM_CHAR from being received by the combobox.

"?" help button triggers WM_HELP _and_ WM_LBUTTONUP

I have a Windows application that registers one CALLBACK procedure that handles WM_HELP messages for the dialog, and one CALLBACK procedure that handles WM_LBUTTONUP messages for a custom button.
Now, when the user clicks the "?" button, then clicks the custom button, the help opens up as expected (on mouse down), BUT if the help window is not occluding the button, a WM_LBUTTONUP message is triggered as well for the custom button (on mouse up). This causes the button to trigger when the user was only asking for help.
Is there any way to stop the WM_LBUTTONUP message from being sent if the button press is for help?
EDIT: The custom button is implemented using a STATIC control. I believe this is because it needs to have an image and no border. So, it does not send BN_CLICKED notifications. In fact, it does not seem to trigger WM_COMMAND in the parent at all.
Thanks
This is normal. Be sure to use the button's BN_CLICKED notification to see the difference. Generated when the user clicks the button, not generated when the user uses the help cursor. The button still sees the normal button up/down messages so that's not a good trigger to detect a click. Extra bonus is that the button can now also be clicked with the keyboard (space bar).
A good class library takes care of these nasty little details.
A better way would be to create ? as a custom control with BS_CHECKBOX | BS_PUSHLIKE style and capture the mouse. After that you will get all the WM_LBUTTONDOWN message to this custom control and then you can use WindowFromPoint to get the window where the WM_LBUTTONDOWN happened and can send a custom notification to the parent window. The parent window can then show a the tooltip or open the help doc or discard it.
The advantage is, you create the control only once and you can use it in multiple places.
Okay, I fixed it by creating the custom button (static control) with the SS_NOTIFY style, then handling the STN_CLICKED notification in the WM_COMMAND message. (SS_NOTIFY causes WM_COMMAND to trigger in the parent when it is clicked.) This does not trigger when using the "?" button. Thanks!