Keyboard problem in 8.10

[Michael Hirsch]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Bruce Marshall <bmarsh at bmarsh.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 November 2008, Michael Hirsch wrote:
>> > I would download the 8.10 iso again but it's a moot point now...  I won't
>> > be using Intrepid anyway, with or without KDE3.  I saw too many other
>> > problems to make me want to use it.     Sad.
>>
>> I had some similar problems, but they were partly self inflicted.
>> Somehow the keycodes have changed on my keyboard.  I use xmodmap to
>> remap the windows keys to function keys and then bind the funtion keys
>> to useful things like "maximize vertically".  The change in keycodes
>> meant that I ended up mapping some of my arrow keys to these
>> functions.  I used xev to see what was going on, then redid my
>> .xmodmap file.
>>
>> If you haven't done any remapping, I wouldn't think this would affect
>> you, but you can still use xev to see what's going on.  Run xev from a
>> terminal window, click the resulting window with your mouse, then try
>> hitting an arrow key.  See what X thinks is happening.
>>
>> It sounds to me like your keyboard isn't quite getting recognized
>> properly.  You could  try another model of keyboard, too.

> I ran xev in 8.04 to see what comes across.  Everything seemed fine.
>
> When I ran it in 8.10, the up/down/right cursor buttons were the same but when
> I do a left cursor, it appears that xev sees nothing.  Nothing happens in the
> xev screen.
>
> However, something is happening because if I start xev, press right cursor,
> and then ctl-c,  xev quits like it should.   But if I start xev and press
> left cursor and then ctl-c, it takes three  ctl-c's to get it to quit, and
> after the 2nd press, a small c with an accent ( č ) appears.   So there are
> some characters being transferred but xev isn't telling.
>
> As I said before, the left cursor worked at the "test your keyboard" point of
> the install....
>
> I just fired up the 8.10 live cd, and the left cursor works there too so it is
> only the installed system that seems to have a problem.

Getting an accented 'c' sure makes it sound like you've got some
special keyboard or character handling going on.  I know almost
nothing about that, but I'm sure someone here does.  You should double
check your Keyboard settings and country/region settings.  I don't
know about KDE 4 in Intrepid so I can't say exactly where, but in KDE
3.5 it's in the "Regional & Accessibility" menu in kcontrol.

Michael