Ubuntu
gnome-control-center package

can't use Alt-Shift-Tab to cycle windows backwards if Alt-Shift switches keyboard layout

Bug #322068 reported by Mikel Ward on 2009-01-27

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #36812: Keyboard layout change on hotkeys press instead of release and do not work well with shortcuts. Edit Remove

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	gnome-control-center	Invalid	Unknown	gnome-bugs #468092
	gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)	Invalid	Low	Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

If Alt-Shift is used to switch between keyboard layouts (System->Preferences->Keyboard->Layouts->Other Options...->Layout Switching, Alt+Shift change layout.), no other shortcuts including Alt-Shift can be used, such as Alt-Shift-Tab to cycle between windows backwards.

Try Alt-Shift-Tab without the above setting enabled and then with it enabled. You'll want at least three windows open to make the effect obvious.

Try running xev when you press Alt-Shift-Tab, you'll see it sends the ISO_Prev_Group keysym before the Tab key can even be pressed, rather than Alt_L, Shift_L, Tab.

In Windows, Alt-Shift-Tab still switches windows backwards with a similar setting enabled.

See original description

Revision history for this message

Mikel Ward (mikelward) wrote on 2009-01-27:

Not sure if this is related?

metacity (1:2.25.8-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low
[...]
- Merge screen and window keybindings files; fix minor alt-tab bug
in the process (Thomas) (LP: #217989)

I'm running Intrepid with latest updates.

Revision history for this message

Mikel Ward (mikelward) wrote on 2009-01-28:

Enabling Compiz doesn't help.

Revision history for this message

Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote on 2009-01-28:

bug 217989 is about alt-shift-tab moving forward instead of backwards and it's fixed on jaunty, the latest metacity package that was upload to intrepid was in 2008-09-22 there's no way to metacity being the faulty here, could you try with another new user created on your system? thanks.

Changed in metacity:
assignee:	nobody → desktop-bugs
importance:	Undecided → Low
status:	New → Incomplete

Revision history for this message

Mikel Ward (mikelward) wrote on 2009-01-28:

Thanks Pedro.

It turns out that if Alt-Shift is used to switch between keyboard layouts (System->Preferences->Keyboard->Layouts->Other Options...->Layout Switching, Alt+Shift change layout.), no other shortcuts including Alt-Shift can be used.

I'll try to find the appropriate owner.

Revision history for this message

Mikel Ward (mikelward) wrote on 2009-01-28:

Hopefully gnome-control-center is the right place for bugs with the GNOME keyboard settings.

Changed in metacity:
status:	Incomplete → New
description:	updated

Revision history for this message

Mikel Ward (mikelward) wrote on 2009-01-28:

Developers, please skip previous comments. I had originally attributed the bug to Metacity, but I was wrong.

The description reflects my new understanding of the cause.

It could be GNOME Keyboard prefs or a general problem with X layout options.

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2009-02-19:

could somebody having the issue send the bug to bugzilla.gnome.org?

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Oded Arbel (oded-geek) wrote on 2009-04-14:

This is an X problem, as the description shows. I don't believe it is possible to have a change in GNOME to affect this issue without fixing the underlying problem of X.org handling of modifier keys.

The GNOME bugzilla issue for this is 468092: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=468092

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) on 2009-04-15

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Triaged

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater) on 2009-04-15

Changed in gnome-control-center:
status:	Unknown → Invalid

Revision history for this message

Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote on 2009-04-15:

upstream closed the bug saying that's the way xorg work and not a bug

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
status:	Triaged → Invalid

Revision history for this message

Oded Arbel (oded-geek) wrote on 2009-04-16:

#10

The fact that its not a problem in GNOME, does not mean that it is not a problem. It just means that gnome-control-center is not the correct upstream. This ticket still describes a real problem in Ubuntu, but as I mentioned in my previous comment it is caused by the was X.org handles the keyboard.

I'm not an X.org developer, I believe this is fixable by causing X.org to do the change on key release instead of key press, emit all the relevant key codes always, and only do the group switching (or whatever action was supposed to be done) only if the specified keys where the only keys used.