Just having come out of another day of plotting, I was able to confirm that some buttons that I use often are ignored when the channel window as opposed to the command line has focus. Amongst these the most annoying ones
:NumPad * (for @),
NumPad / (for thru),
keyboard "t" (when recording with time, it ignores the "t" for time, whereas "t" for "thru" seems to work.
Catches me out frustratingly often when combining click/scroll tasks with command line.