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Ignore custom keyboard scan codes #3468

@nvaccessAuto

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@nvaccessAuto

Reported by jteh on 2013-08-25 01:37
Some computer manufacturers use custom keyboard scan codes to indicate custom buttons or other behaviour; e.g. wireless toggle, screen brightness, gyroscope movement, etc. This causes multiple issues:

  • Just as for most other key presses, NVDA silences speech when these are detected. This is okay for buttons, but is a major annoyance for gyroscope movement which can happen unintentionally.
  • Some of these scan codes are scan codes for normal keys (characters, etc.) but with the extended flag. Unfortunately, GetKeyNameText, which we use as a fallback when we can't get a name for the key via other means, ignores the extended flag unless it is significant for a standard key. In one case, this means that gyroscope movement is treated as a character, which triggers quick navigation in browse mode.

From what I've been able to determine, these custom scan codes have no vk code mapping, so they get a vk code of 0xff. If they have no vk code, this should mean Windows doesn't know about them, in which case we almost certainly don't care about them.

Therefore, we should ignore key presses with a vk code of 0xff. I haven't decided whether we should just avoid generating gestures for them altogether or whether we should generate gestures but avoid silencing speech and give them a name which indicates they are unknown.

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