I assume it's relatively well known, but here's where I landed. My plan to fix this, was to bypass XKM support completely, by integrating the parser into the server. Currently the server forks xkbcomp to build a particular keymap, xkbcomp produces (lossy) XKM files, and then the server consumes XKM. xkbcommon was supposed to fix this (hence the name), but the problem is that the server wants very different things from xkbcommon than everyone else. Specifically, it wants to be able to mutate arbitrary parts of the keymap after construction, which is very messy. Ultimately we just kept xkbcommon for everyone _but_ the X server, with a much smaller API.
The best thing to do for anyone who wants to pick this up is probably to look at importing xkbcommon circa https://github.com/xkbcommon/libxkbcommon/commit/ed18e65eacdabfeaeafee7c369891312af99c82d into the X server, in place of the xkbcomp entrypoint in xkb/ddxLoad.c. That particular commit is probably the most tractable balance between an actual functional xkbcommon without memory leaks, and one which hasn't changed the server-facing API and internals _too_ far away from what the server needs. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to xorg-server in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/251443 Title: [Needs xkb protocol rework] keyboard layout switching shortcuts like Alt+Alt do not work anymore Status in Ubuntu: Unknown Status in xorg-server package in Ubuntu: Invalid Bug description: Binary package hint: xorg (Bug #196277 used to cover two separate but similar looking bugs. We split them now, and here we describe one of the two bugs. The other bug has to do with autologin, which when enabled, ignores any keyboard layout settings that have been configured in GNOME, the graphical interface). In the keyboard layout preferences, you can set "Both alt keys together change layout", which worked in Gutsy for toggling between keyboard layouts. Currently: * "both alt keys..." does not toggle keyboard layouts * "both ctrl keys..." does not toggle keyboard layouts * "both shift keys..." works fine * "Alt+shift" works fine Steps to reproduce it are: * Visit System->Preferences->Keyboard-Layouts * Press Add and add a new layout. * Close preferences. * Open Text Editor or whatever you want and write something with Double-Alts it switch layout and writes with the other layout OK till now. * Reboot. * Open a text editor and try to switch layout... Boom! It doesn't work! Temporary Workaround. Open Layouts again and remove/add the second layout to start working again. another workaround using a script: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/196277/comments/60 The text in the applet will change, to make it appear to be setting the correct layout, but the changes do not take effect. Actually shortcut doesn't work at all, I set to be alts toggle in keyboard preferences, and it doesn't work, another thing is that even with keyboard indicator applet you change language, it doesn't changes, name in the applet changes, but it doesn't work. I need to open keyboard preferences, layout options, remove the tick and then put it back on keyboard layout switching shortcut.. As I said, shortcut doesn't work after this, but applet starts to change the layout, not only letters on itself. This issue has been sufficiently confirmed. Please do not comment on this bug unless you have some information that will help solve the bug. [Background] Both Canonical and upstream are aware of this issue and consider it of high importance. Unfortunately, the root cause is not something that can be easily fixed. The issue is that to solve this problem, we need to have a way to save the ExplicitVModMapMask, which is tracked okay in memory but not when the configuration is passed via XKM binary files, because the XKM binary file format simply doesn't have a field for storing the VModMask flag data. The XKM file format allows only 8 flags to be set, and there are already 8 defined. See the upstream bug report for details: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4927 Upstream's proposed solution to the problem is to remove the xkbcomp design and the xkm file format entirely, and switch to new X input technologies. This will be a fairly sizeable re-architecting effort, and will take time to complete. If you would like to help contribute to this solution for this problem, please work with Sergey Udaltsov. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/251443/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
