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

[Bryce Harrington]

@Alexey Kozlov, thanks for your well written summary of the problem.

The one warning flag is the "contradicts spec" issue (which may be what
has blocked this from being taken up 'til now), however the exact words
from upstream about this seem less dire:

 The patch looks pretty much fine to me, except that I'd just hardcode
 release-only and don't try to make it configurable.  I'm not entirely
 sure about the bit marked with KLUDGE, and would like to find a better
 way to do it, but if that's fixed (I'll try to have a look this weekend
 or next, depending on time), my only objection to merging it is that it
 explicitly contradicts the spec.  I'm not entirely convinced that's a
 dealbreaker though.

I can understand that voiding the spec is a blocker for upstream, but at
the distro level there's a little bit more flexibility, especially given
the top-level direction that we'll eventually move away from X11 towards
something Wayland-ish anyway.

It sounds like the next step required for this patch is to gain some
more widespread testing.  Since the change is behavioral, it seems low
risk for causing crashes or other critical issues, so tentatively I'm
willing to stick it in natty and see how it goes.

** Changed in: xserver-xorg-input-evdev (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Wishlist

** Changed in: xserver-xorg-input-evdev (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Fix Committed

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/36812

Title:
  Keyboard layout change on hotkeys press instead of release and do not work well with shortcuts

Status in GNOME Control Center:
  Unknown
Status in NULL Project:
  Invalid
Status in X.Org X server:
  In Progress
Status in “control-center” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “xserver-xorg-input-evdev” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  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.