textcompositionmanager

I am using PreviewKeyDown event on a window to receive all the keys from a barcode scanner. The KeyEventArgs is an enumeration and does not given me the actual string. I dont want to use TextInput as some of the keys may get handled by the control itself and may not bubble up to the TextInput event. I am looking for a way to convert the the Keys that I get in PreviewKeyDown to actual string. I looked at the InputManager, TextCompositionManager etc but I am not finding a way where I give the list of keys and it comes back with a string. TextCompositionManager or something must be converting

The docs on this are pretty shoddy. There are a number of events you can hook into to monitor and take control of text input that are accessed via the TextCompositionManager . If you're wanting to do something like snag card swipe data, this is where you'd do it. There are three events that concern text input: TextInput , TextStart , and TextUpdate . There are two versions of each event, one where the event is tunneling (traveling down from the Window to the control which has focus) and when it is bubbling (traveling up from the focused UI element to the window): Tunneling: