Application.addEventListener not working as expected

Question

I wanted to add a global KEY_DOWN event listener and
MOUSE_CLICK event listener to my app. The help files say to use the
application.addEventListener(type, handler) to do this. I added the
listeners in my creationComplete function but they do not work for
windows I popup. I know these windows are in the application scope
because I am setting application level model attributes in them
that the main window uses. Why are these events not registering
from popup windows if this is global?

Answer 1

laurent demaret wrote:
But I can also use application:openFile: that works too.
No, you can't. The Apple Event "open files" will open one or more files. That is why the documentation says to use "application:openFiles:".
And it is present as well in the application delegate protocol reference nearby application:openFiles: and application:openTempFile: all in the "Opening Files" tasks group.
Why is one called in addition and not the other ? Is application:openTempFile: usage left to the reader guess?
They are delegate messages. Their only reason for existence is for the programmer to use as he or she sees fit. In one specific example, the Apple event "open files", one of these delegate methods is the recommended way to handle the "open files" Apple Event.
I did not found other answer in the Xcode documentation than the "How Cocoa Applications Handle Apple Events" paragraph of the Cocoa Scripting Guide OS (which is back to 10.4 as you noticed it) that advise to use application:openFiles: which brings me back to the other methods for opening files, some working, some not..
I'm not used to such a fluzziness in the documentation.
You are not used to the delegate pattern. This API has been in existence for 25 years across several, radically different, architectures. There is a lot of legacy there. If the documentation says to use method A and you discove that method B works too, you should switch to method A. There is no guarantee that method B will continue to work in the future. You have already discovered this as you keep trying to use techniques from 1991. Please, just use the recommended method. You have nothing to gain by trying other methods that have similar-sounding names and are described nearby to other methods in the documentation.