Ctrl+Alt keybindings on Windows

[csholmq]

Both Notepad++ and Atom uses F2. Set/Unset with e.g. Shift+F2 and then F2 to jump between.

[alefragnani]

Yes, I remember that, but F2 and Ctrl + F2 are already used as Code commands:

{ "key": "f2",                    "command": "editor.action.rename",
                                     "when": "editorTextFocus" },
{ "key": "ctrl+f2",               "command": "editor.action.changeAll",
                                     "when": "editorTextFocus" },

I tried to use Ctrl + Shift + K instead, but it was already being used as editor.action.deleteLines, so I ended up using the actual combination Ctrl + Alt + K to toggle, J and L to navigate. Besides this warning in console, the keybindings works fine.

But, the good about Code (just like Atom) is that you can define you own keybinds, as described in https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/customization/keybindings.

Hope this helps.

[csholmq]

That's true. But as Ctrl+Alt can block special characters on non US keyboard layouts, perhaps the defaults should avoid that?

[alefragnani]

Hm, I didn't know the warning message was about that, I'm sorry. Since it was working fine for me (on a Windows Machine), and didn't find any docs about that, I thought it was some kind of false positive. I will take extra care next time when choosing keybindings.

I understand your point, but what about the users that already installed the extension? If I change the default keybinding, the extension will stop working for them 😞 . Personally, I have no problem about changing the keybidings for shift+alt for instance, but as I said, I'm worried with the current users.

I will try to contact VSCode team, asking them for an advice on how I could handle this. Maybe they have a workaround that could handle existing users.

Thanks

[csholmq]

Here's some more info. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040329-00/?p=40003

There's also some work being done in Chromium to solve this;
Intent: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/Znyl5a96oDc
Issue: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=263724#c41
Blocker: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=168971
Blocker: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=227231
Blocker: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=527111
Blocker: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=564678

[alefragnani]

Some ideas:

1. Display a message right after updating the extension, asking if they want to keep the old keybinding, or replace with the new. Because only add this info in the Readme wouldn't be enough.
2. Create different Keybindings depending on Keyboard Layout Support contributing different keybindings based on keyboard layout microsoft/vscode#1240

[alefragnani]

There is no ETA for the VS Code API to be available, and so, I'm closing the issue.