Bug#483725: xserver-xorg-input-kbd: volume keys and altgr-combinationsstopped working after upgrade

[Mihnea-Costin Grigore <mihnea@zulu.ro>]

On Sat, 31 May 2008 00:28:32 +0200, Brice Goglin
<Brice.Goglin@ens-lyon.org> wrote:
> Can you actually check that downgrading to 1.2.2 (it's in testing)
> solves the problem?

I did check, and I actually found out that it wasn't caused by this
package, but by xkb-data which was upgraded at the same time.

The problem was actually introduced by the latest changes to xkb-data,
namely this:
   + change Romanian keymap to use the correct comma
        characters. (Closes: #481176)

I was actually using that specific configuration and the change completely
removed the "comma" kbd variant, replacing it with "basic". However, no
warning message whatsoever is printed by either X.Org or KDE or any other
program to that effect, leaving me with an apparently non-working keyboard.

The non-working diacritics were solved by removing the xkb_variant line
below:

>> Section "InputDevice"
(...)
>>   Option      "xkb_variant" "comma"           # basic/comma

And the volume/multimedia keys started working again after I selected the
"basic" variant in the KDE Control Center.

So the real bug here is the fact that this change is done without warning,
and people who actually use the "comma" variant (albeit a very few) will
find their keyboard non functioning and no error message to help diagnose
the problem.

Thanks and best regards,
-- 
Mihnea-Costin Grigore