IssueTracker

I don't think this falls under pointer input so this is simply less tied to the area I've been focusing on.  I think this should be considered open for anyone else to start working on.  I think the two main areas of work for keyboard input are building out the equivalent of focusableInTouchMode and routing keyboard input events to the appropriate node/modifier.  

Is this something that Semantics should handle?  Seems that if it did, both keyboard events, auto fill, google assistant, could all use the same mechanism to send text data to the ui.

Hey Shep, thanks for the info.
For the ticket itself it is a reminder for us that is not prioritized yet.
For editable text (TextField) this should already work since IME handles it.
However I am not sure if and when we want to support what Android has (things like menu shortcuts).

Happy to hear from Ryan and Ralston in case this subject was discussed before.

I don't think this is/should be within Semantics's domain.  Hardware keyboard input should, as far as I know, follow the same path as (and is, as far as I understand it, indistinguishable from) soft keyboard input (in fact, Gboard actually interacts with hardware keyboards).

I also don't think we want autofill/assistant to actually send keyboard events.  That could lead to very strange results as well as maybe performance issues - consider it trying to send dozens of key events instantaneously.  I'd think we'd want it to fill text fields directly via some other mechanism (probably an action callback).

Ah, I based on Siyamed's comment, this bug is intended to track the work necessary to handle keyboard events that aren't related to IME.  (like menu shortcuts).  I'm not sure what is needed here.

Oh I see.  There's probably some overlap there.  For instance, the accessibility focus traversal ordering is probably pretty similar to the input focus traversal ordering (though a11y would likely focus things that input would not).

I think one question is probably at what level these things live.  There are a bunch of keys that probably don't need to go to substantially all widgets with keyboard input, like volume/menu/search/back.  Then there are things like tab, which some input widgets will want, but others should ignore and pass through to another handler (to, say, move input focus).

I think Android's model for this is pretty decent - an intercept pass down the hierachy, then a pass back up for normal handling.  It handles both cases well, as each component can decide which keys it cares about, rather than us trying to predict all use-cases in advance.  We would, of course, handle these correctly in our controls, and we'd need to make it easy (no internals or copy-pasting of internals) to implement, say, correct tab behavior.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying: "I think we should handle these like any other keyboard input."

bulk comment, fyi: we have added icebox to all the tickets because it was suggested by blintz in order to prevent auto-close tickets. we want to keep our Compose tickets to remain opened.

see b/123001228#comment6

Project: platform/frameworks/support
Branch: androidx-main

commit 072a880c9ab1a245711fe9e67e9a56f2da04b790
Author: Andrey Rudenko <andrei.rudenko@jetbrains.com>
Date:   Fri Feb 05 22:43:02 2021

    Hardware Keyboard support in TextField
   
    It adds onKeyEvent Modifier to CoreTextField and sets up the handling of KeyEvent in a uniform way across Android and Desktop. This includes support of all main keyboard shortcuts to edit, navigate and select text in TextField.
   
    This CL doesn't touch any of the existing APIs and doesn't introduce the new ones. On Desktop in changes significantly how hardware keyboard events are handled. PlatformInput is responsible only for interaction with IM.
   
    Most of the text operations in this CL were abstracted to TextFieldPreparedSelection and TextPreparedSelection, the latter one can be used in future CL to implement similar keyboard shortcuts for CoreText.
   
    It's incomplete, we have to define better the Compose behavior on Android with a hardware keyboard, possibly it has to react to TouchMode changes and, for example, do not show software keyboard when hardware one is in action
   
    Relnote: N/A
    Bug: 139322105
    Test: ./gradlew :compose:foundation:foundation:connectedAndroidTest
    Change-Id: I2d5d462ec1f57de41ddfd9218411e695fe4bb2e2

M       compose/desktop/desktop/samples/src/jvmMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/desktop/examples/example1/Main.jvm.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/1.0.0-beta02.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/current.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/public_plus_experimental_1.0.0-beta02.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/public_plus_experimental_current.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/restricted_1.0.0-beta02.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/api/restricted_current.txt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/build.gradle
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/androidAndroidTest/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/textfield/HardwareKeyboardTest.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/src/androidMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/KeyMapping.android.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/src/androidMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/TextFieldKeyInput.android.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/CoreTextField.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/KeyCommand.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/KeyMapping.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/StringHelpers.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/TextFieldKeyInput.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/commonMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/selection/TextPreparedSelection.kt
M       compose/foundation/foundation/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/DesktopCoreTextField.desktop.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/KeyMapping.desktop.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/TextFieldKeyInput.desktop.kt
A       compose/foundation/foundation/src/jvmMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/foundation/text/StringHelpers.jvm.kt
M       compose/ui/ui-text/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/text/platform/DesktopParagraph.desktop.kt
M       compose/ui/ui-text/src/desktopTest/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/text/DesktopParagraphTest.kt
M       compose/ui/ui/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/desktop/ComposeLayer.desktop.kt
M       compose/ui/ui/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/input/key/Key.desktop.kt
M       compose/ui/ui/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/platform/DesktopOwner.desktop.kt
M       compose/ui/ui/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/platform/DesktopOwners.desktop.kt
M       compose/ui/ui/src/desktopMain/kotlin/androidx/compose/ui/platform/DesktopPlatformInput.desktop.kt

https://android-review.googlesource.com/1578803