Catching a KeyEvent from the TAB key...

Question

Well it does not appear to send any KeyEvents to my KeyListener...
any reason for this? and is there any fix to do?
I need a special tab completion feature for my application and need to catch the KeyEvent for the tab key.

Answer 1

It has to do with the focus-model. In this case both, ALT-events and TAB-events are send, but not if they are pressed together. The reason is that when they are pressed together the focus traverses to the next window (on win98 it does).
public static void main(String[] args){
  JFrame f = new JFrame("Parent"); 
  KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().addKeyEventDispatcher(createKeyEventDispatcher());
  f.setBounds(100,100,400,300);
  f.setVisible(true);
public static KeyEventDispatcher createKeyEventDispatcher(){
  return new KeyEventDispatcher(){
             public boolean dispatchKeyEvent(KeyEvent e){
            System.out.println("Dispatching: " +e);
            if(e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_TAB){
                   //do anything
                   return true;  //Don't continue dispatching
                  }else
                   return false; //continue dispatching
}