[Bug 36812] [NEW] Keyboard layout change on hotkeys press instead of release and do not work well with shortcuts

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Bryce Harrington (bryce):

This is a bug about shortcuts mapped to combinations which include each
other.

For example, if we have Ctrl+Shift (for keyboard layout) and Ctrl+Shift+N (to open a new terminal), then we are practically unable to use the second shortcut; this is what happens:
Ctrl press  (nothing happens)
Shift press (keyboard layout change)
N (a simple N appears, since a shortcut has already fired)

The expected behavior is to fire shortcuts on the release (not on press)
of the special keys (ctrl,shift,alt, etc) which is also how Windows
behave. This is a serious problem for bilingual layouts, typically using
Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift for keyboard layout change.

For users being affected by this problem, the easiest solution for now is to add this PPA in your repositories:
https://launchpad.net/~oded-geek/+archive/xorg-patches

Practical summary of this bug for ubuntu developers (since reading 120 comments is impractical for most):
This problem is a really old (since 2004) issue of the xkb part of xorg; the main discussion was made upstream in freedesktop-bugs #865. There has been a patch from Ilya Murav'jov for upstream (#55), and attached here (#61).
Upstream xorg has refused to apply the patch, mainly because it "explicitly contradicts the (xkb) spec"  (#84, #91).
This patch has been reported to work for many people without any problems, and there is also a PPA by Oded Arbel (#95) where he maintains a patched version of the ubuntu xorg.
The proper resolution of this bug would be to apply this patch to the upstream xorg, or at minimum to the official ubuntu xorg package.

** Affects: gnome-control-center
     Importance: Medium
         Status: Unknown

** Affects: null
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Invalid

** Affects: xorg-server
     Importance: Medium
         Status: In Progress

** Affects: control-center (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Low
     Assignee: Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
         Status: Invalid

** Affects: xserver-xorg-input-evdev (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: patch
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Keyboard layout change on hotkeys press instead of release and do not work well with shortcuts
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/36812
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