461107 - [HexNumpad] Hexadecimal character input doesn't work

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect, P5)

Description

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

Attachment: Registry entry to be merged into registry to activate hex input

In Windows (at least in XP), after adding/changing one registry key (see attachment), there's a possibility to enter any character by (with [Alt] key depressed) typing [+] followed by hexadecimal representation of its Unicode codepoint, for example:
[Alt][+, 2, 0, 2, 1] enters the ‡ (U+2021) character,
[Alt][+, 2, 0, 1, e] enters the „ (U+201e) character.

This works perfectly in applications such as Notepad. However in Firefox, if the hexadecimal representation of the codepoint happens to contain a letter which is also an accesskey, the widget with that accesskey is activated. This doesn't happen in Notepad, so I guess it must be a bug on our side.

For example, [Alt][+, 2, 0, 1, e] activates the "Edit" menu in Firefox, and [Alt][+, 2, 0, 1, f] activates the "File" menu.

Comment 1

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

This might be WONTFIX. Because the key events are sent normally to us. So, we cannot decide whether an Alt+foo key event should be handled by the IME. I think that the IME should eat the key events.

Comment 2

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

I looked at attachment 316954 [details]. It catches an additional event when Alt is being released.

I just performed some quick tests with other applications on Windows:
* Word 2007 and Skype both entered an incorrect character
* Internet Explorer and Paint.NET acted just like Firefox – opened a "File" or "Edit" menu when I entered an accesskey letter
* Safari, Notepad, Paint, and Notepad2 acted like I was expecting

What a mess...

Comment 3

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

Moving all open Keyboard/IME handling bugs to DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling component.

Comment 4

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

All key events for HexNumpad are reported as WM_SYS_KEYDOWN. This behavior is exactly same as you type anything with Alt key. If Therefore is a way to detect it's in HexNumpad sequence, we can fix this though.