michel said:
>   This still works if my cursor is over the field
>   but, if the cursor is over another window, 
>   this one becomes active and nothing gets into the Edit Field.

it sounds like you have just one edit field in the whole interface.
if that is indeed the case,
have a keypress in any window do this:
1)  switch output to the window that contains the edit field,
2)  insert the keypress, and
3)  switch output back to the window where it was.

-bowerbird