Blocking F6 and F8 with WindowsLookAndFeel

Question

I have a Swing application which uses the WindowsLookAndFeel. The application relies critically on using function keys F1-F12 for various actions. All of the keys work, except F6 and F8. These get caught by a JSplitPane, where they are the standard keys for toggling between the splits and moving to the split bar.
Is there any way of preventing this behaviour? I've tried removing F6 and F8 from the inputmap of the object in question. I catch the key strokes for my own functions by placing an entry in the input map for each of them.
I'd be grateful for any help, as I'm not making a lot of progress on this.

Answer 1

Did you remove the binding from all the InputMap's ancestors, too? From what I've seen, the InputMap that's returned by a component's getInputMap() method is usually just a shell; all the actual bindings are in its parent, the InputMap supplied by the L&F. To be sure of getting rid of a binding for a particular key, you have to iterate through all its ancestors:   public static void removeBinding(JComponent comp, String key)
    KeyStroke ks = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(key);
    if (ks == null)
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unknown key name: " + key);
    InputMap map = comp.getInputMap();
    while (map != null)
      map.remove(ks);
      map = map.getparent();
  }Another possibility is to set up the function keys as global hotkeys, as described here. That way you don't have to mess around with unbinding, because the JSplitPane will never even see the key presses.