Forbid language switch for certain application(s)

Question

I have a problem of accidental input language switch. I tried many different settings in order to not do it - change hotkey, install some software (Key Switcher, Keyboard Ninja, Punto Switcher)... But nothing helped.

I used to certain hotkey (Ctrl+Shift). Any other hotkey make me even more suffer. The software I found has no feature to avoid accidental switches.

What I want is to find a piece of software which can stick "English US" input language to my "Visual Studio". And any Ctrl+Shift pushes inside VS should not lead to language switch. Have any ideas?

Answer 1

If you go to
Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Languages / Details / Key Settings
you'll find that you can define hotkeys for language changes.

You may couple this with a macro language like AutoHotkey, to define a macro that changes the language/keyboard-layout and then launches Visual Studio. This however won't block future language-changes.

If you're looking for something much stricter than that, as far as I know no such program exists. As VS is extensible, you can program yourself an add-in that will limit the number of languages allowed for VS. This small add-in will load with VS and set the preferred languages to just one (english).

If you wish to launch yourself in this direction, the following links might be helpful for a start:

Supporting Application-Specific Language Settings
Tutorial : Creating Visual Studio Add-Ins
Creating Visual Studio Add-Ins

Answer 2

As long as your default language is already set and you only need to change the language for one program I would suggest changing the language for that program (VS) and then going into the Language Options and changing the hotkey to none, and then go to the key sequence and uncheck that box (Regional and language options -> Languages tab -> details -> Key Settings -> Change Key Sequence). Now the shortcuts will be off, and since Windows remembers inputs on a per application basis the input will automatically switch for VS but remain Spanish for everything else.

Answer 3

The following works in Visual Studio .NET 2003 on WinXP 32-bit. YMMV.

• File -> New Project
• select Project Type: Other Projects \ Extensibility Projects
• select template: Visual Studio .NET Add-in. Click OK.
• click Next, select Create an Add-in using Visual C++ / ATL, click Next.
• select all possible appication hosts, click Next.
• (optionally) enter a name and description, click Next.
• choose Options. Don't check "yes, create a Tools menu item". Click Next.
• don't choose to create an About box. Click Next.
• click Finish.
• switch to the tab with the source file Connect.cpp

• at the top, after the #includes add the line

  HHOOK myhook;
  

• to method CConnect::OnConnection add the line

  myhook=SetWindowsHookEx(WH_GETMESSAGE, &myGetMsgProc, _AtlModule.GetResourceInstance(), GetCurrentThreadId());
  

• to method CConnect::OnDisconnection add the line

  UnhookWindowsHookEx(myhook);
  

• above OnConnection() add the function

  LRESULT CALLBACK myGetMsgProc(int code, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
  {
      MSG *msg = (MSG*)lParam;
      if (code>=0 && msg->message==WM_INPUTLANGCHANGEREQUEST)
          msg->message = WM_NULL;
      return CallNextHookEx(myhook, code, wParam, lParam);
  }
  

• build the solution.
• select menu Tools -> Add-in Manager...
• check the box for your new add-in. Don't check "Startup" for now in case anything went wrong - you don't want Visual Studio crashing every time it starts!
• click OK.

It is now impossible to change language or keyboard layout in Visual Studio. The language bar gets a little confused if you try, but doesn't break.