Check if a Key is Down with Qt

Question

I am playing around with some graphics, and I have implemented simple camera movement with the arrow keys. My first approach was to override keyPressEvent to do something like this:

switch(key)
{
   case up: MoveCameraForward(step); break;
   case left: MoveCameraLeft(step); break;
   ...
}

This doesn't work as I wish it would. When I press and hold, for example, the forward key, the camera moves forward "step" units, then halts for a while and then continues moving. I am guessing that this is how the event is generated, in order to avoid multiple events in case of a little bit long keypress.

So, I need to poll the keyboard in my Paint() routine. I haven't found how to do it with Qt. I thought of having a map<Key, bool> which would be updated in keyPressEvent and keyReleaseEvent and poll that map in Paint(). Any better ideas? Thanks for any insights.

Answer 1

So, I need to poll the keyboard in my Paint() routine. I haven't found how to do it with Qt. I thought of having a map which would be updated in keyPressEvent and keyReleaseEvent and poll that map in Paint().

Your second method is what I would have done, except that I would use a continuous, periodic QTimer event to poll the keyboard-pressed map and call QWidget::Update() function when necessary to invalidate the display widget instead. Performing non-painting operations inside Paint() is strongly discouraged for many reasons but I do not know how to explain that well.