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I just used the SecondaryShortCuts-Feature of Delphi's TAction. But Shortcuts are defined by Strings, like "F5" or "Shift+F5". Now the problem: On my German Windows the action doesn't fire, because the key "Shift" is called "Umsch" in German! Does it mean the SecondaryShortCuts-Property is completely useless at design time, because nobody can create applications which work internationally with that?

I could set the key at runtime by translating the VK_SHIFT into the correct name. I tried it via GetKeyNameText but this didn't worked because it gave the long form "Umschalt" not "Umsch". Anybody know the function to get the short version of the key name?

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You could try this: Generate the shortcut text from a shortcut:

var
  s: TShortCut;
begin
  s := ShortCut(Ord('A'), [ssShift]);
  Action1.SecondaryShortCuts.Add(ShortCutToText(s));

By the way, these values are determined by the following constants. Have you translated those? And if so, do you need to?:

SmkcShift = 'Shift+';
SmkcCtrl = 'Ctrl+';
SmkcAlt = 'Alt+';
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    PS: I'm aware that Shift+A might not be the best shortcut if you also need to be able to type text. ;-)
    – GolezTrol
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 12:11
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    Thanks for hinting me in this direction. I see now its no windows issue but pure vcl. The constants (SmkcShift etc.) are resourcestrings and they are pretranslated if you use a German Delphi. The use of SecondaryShortCuts is very dangerous, because it depends on the language of the used delphi version and if you are translating the resourcestrings at runtime.
    – Steffen Binas
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 13:28
  • Indeed, but if you set the SecondaryShortcuts from code, you should be safe, because it translates the TShiftState to a string representation using the constant values you have loaded at that moment. Still, I agree it is odd that they chose to store those values as a translatable string.
    – GolezTrol
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 13:30
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    I'm stumped that somebody considered it a good idea to derive TShortCutList from TStringList. Or why Borland published that property in the OI without writing a simple property editor for it. :-/
    – Uli Gerhardt
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 14:19
  • Indeed. It looks like they took a shortcut (no pun intended).
    – GolezTrol
    Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 14:22

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