I'm sorry if there is a way already, but I couldn't find this.
I have a value picker and I want to launch the dialog via a button. Currently it may be an image or link automatically generated within picker control.
Some use cases may be using toolbar icon, keyboard event (told before), right click menu, onchange event of another control or onfocus event of the associated control.
I tried a workaround but the picker control does not generate a DOM id by design. Even it generates, some browsers limit the ability to fire onclick event from another part of the context. So, a client side function associated with the control's node will solve this.
Currently, the only workaround is putting the control inside a hidden span and copy the onclick event and put it into a button's onclick. It will not work in custom controls because the js call contains the id of the view.