Bug#677173: 3.2.19-1: after some time, the USB keyboard no longer works
On 2012-07-20 08:58:57 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> So, it would seem that some part of the system would enable SlowKeys
> in my back for one of the keyboards (I recall that when this happens
> while I'm using the USB keyboard, only the USB keyboard is affected,
> not the laptop keyboard).
>
> If there a way to know whether SlowKeys is enabled, for each available
> keyboard? (Note: I'm not using GNOME, and even GNOME would be useless
> because according to what I see on this page, it cannot differentiate
> keyboards.)
Additional information:
* SlowKeys can be turned on and off by pressing the Shift key for
at least 10 seconds:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
I've tried and I confirm that this "works". When several keyboards
are attached, only the keyboard for which the Shift key is pressed
is affected (I suppose that this is expected).
* When the bug occurred in my case, I don't think I've pressed Shift
for 10 seconds (well, when I do this, this is in combination with
another key like PageUp / PageDown, but in this case, SlowKeys
switching isn't triggered), at least in most of the cases.
* It may happen that the system misses the Shift Release event.
Actually this is what happened on July 14. I recall:
Something interesting occurred with the USB keyboard. I was using
Iceweasel, and suddenly it behaved as if both the Shift and Ctrl
keys were pressed: left-clicks were extending the selection, and
a left-click on a link was opening it in a background tab. After
hitting various keys, this no longer occurred, [...]
And this is what happened last night. This could explain why the
problem occurs and that this could be specific to the USB keyboard
on this machine.
* I had said that the problem also occurred with the main keyboard,
but I don't remember whether I did anything special with the Shift
key in this case.
To summarize, there could be two different problems (but I'm not
sure):
1. The fact that pressing the Shift key for at least 10 seconds
activates SlowKeys for this keyboard. I don't think that this
feature should be enabled by default. Hidden features are bad.
Also, there may be a good reason to hold the Shift key for
10 seconds: when using it in a combination of Shift + clicks.
And when SlowKeys is enabled/disabled (in this way at least),
something should be written to some log file, so that the user
can get the information in case he wonders.
2. The fact that a Shift Release event can be missed (it remains
to be confirmed) with this USB keyboard.
Note: I haven't noticed any missing Release event for the other
keys.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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