Re: Gnome Terminal and alternative keyboard layouts

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Sat, 2003-04-05 at 00:21, Nickolay Kolev wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am reposting this from the XFree86 list where I didn't get any
> responses. Excuses to those subscribed to both. If I am wrong in the
> mailing list please do correct me.
> 
> I have the following problem with my RedHat 9 setup. I tried and
> successfully added a phonetic bulgarian layout to the default german
> one. Here is the snip from the XF86Config:
> 
> Option "XkbLayout" "de,bg"
> Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys,phonetic"
> Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
> 
> This works with no problems in all Applications except for the Gnome
> Terminal, where, independent of the current layout, typing the letter F
> brings down the file menu, H the help mennu and so on, as if the Alt key
> was simultaniously pressed.
> 
> What could be wrong and what is to be done to remedy the situation?

My guess would be that this is related to:

 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100439

Basically, it's the Alt/Shift toggle setting that is giving problems.
GTK+ is told by Xkb "the alt key affects the key symbol that pressing F
gives", so it "consumes" the alt key, the same way as it doesn't
pay attention to the Shift key when distinguishing f and F.

I'm not sure when this is going to be fixed ... my initial guess is i
that it is a *lot* of work. I'd suggest using a different method of
switching keyboard layouts and see if that helps.

Regards,
                                          Owen


(Note - this explanation doesn't quite make sense to me; I think a
lot of people are using Control-shift toggles without the corresponding
problems. There may be some bug in the XFree86 keyboard layouts which
is involved here or something.)