Increasing access

Having some symmetry where you can also do:

keyIsDown('a');

would be useful for teaching beginners.

Which types of changes would be made?

• Breaking change (Add-on libraries or sketches will work differently even if their code stays the same.)
• Systemic change (Many features or contributor workflows will be affected.)
• Overdue change (Modifications will be made that have been desirable for a long time.)
• Unsure (The community can help to determine the type of change.)

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Accessibility
• Color
• Core/Environment/Rendering
• Data
• DOM
• Events
• Image
• IO
• Math
• Typography
• Utilities
• WebGL
• Build process
• Unit testing
• Internationalization
• Friendly errors
• Other (specify if possible)

What's the problem?

keyIsDown() currently only works with keycodes. Sometimes this is confusing for my students, because they can use this for things like:

keyIsDown(LEFT_ARROW);
keyIsDown(ENTER);

but if they want to check if an alphanumeric key is down, the code is different:

keyIsPressed && key == 'a'

What's the solution?

keyIsDown() would need an addition that checks the type of the argument and allows passing text/characters. This means p5.js would have some symmetry where you can also do:

keyIsDown('a');

Pros (updated based on community comments)

Example list:

• Consistency: This proposal increases API consistency by giving users a way to enter the name of an alphanumeric key for keyIsDown();
• can use keyIsDown() without having to look up keycodes

Cons (updated based on community comments)

• would this be confusing for cases like keyIsDown(4) where the user might mean the number 4? (note that 3, 8, and 9 are valid keycodes, so we can't just allow all numbers < 10)

Proposal status

Under review