AutoKey-GTK: Hot Keys and Abbreviations have Stopped Working

[Lonnie Lee Best]

I've been running the alpha of Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop 64bit, and up until today, autokey-gtk has been working.

Today I updated my computer with updates suggested by Ubuntu's update manager, and after rebooting my computer I'm no longer able to use hot-keys and abbreviations to initiate phrases and scripts stored in autokey-gtk.

Autokey is my favorite productivity application. If it doesn't start working soon, I will have to terminate my testing of 13.10 and reinstall 13.04. I can live without some things, but I've got to have my AutoKey!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: autokey-gtk 0.90.1-1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-4.9-generic 3.11.0-rc7
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-4-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.12.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Sep 5 22:06:22 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-08-03 (33 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: autokey
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-08-28 (8 days ago)

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

I just reinstalled Ubuntu 13.10 from the daily build:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

This did NOT resolve my issue with AutoKey-GTK.

Without hotkeys or abbreviations functioning, autokey is practically useless.

Please confirm this bug and deem it critical.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

In an attempt to see if my own configuration was corrupted, I backup my autokey configuration at:
/home/user/.config/autokey

Then I deleted it, and launched autokey. It created a brand new folder at that same location.

I then attempted create a hotkey for one of the default phrases that comes with autokey. I was unable to achieve this; I was able to select the control keys I wanted (using the mouse), but upon hitting a particular key (on the keyboard), it would not register that key:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autokey/+bug/1221548

Unfortunately, this ends my testing of Ubuntu 13.10 alpha. I'm was fine with running this alpha (for 8 days) until AutoKey stopped working. I'm going back to 13.04, and I'll upgrade again in a couple of week if these autokey issues are resolved.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Just to be thorough, I thought I'd report that after regressing back to Ubuntu 13.04 autokey-gtk works with version 0.90.1.

Maybe this bug should be brought to the attention of an underlying package that AutoKey depends on.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Will someone please confirmed this bug? This is huge issue for me.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Since, this bug is preventing AutoKey from working at all, can someone please change the importance of this bug to severe?

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Again today, I upgraded from 13.04 to 13.10 and hot-keys and abbreviations are still not working in the beta of 13.10.

I don't use autokey-qt anymore; I use autokey-gtk because it seems to have less bugs.

To me, this is the most important bug in Ubuntu 13.10; its the only thing keeping me from running 13.10.

[rod singleton (rod40cool)]

Confirmed this bug affects not only autokey-gtk but autokey-qt as well. I feel totally lost without this. Not feeling good about upgrading early to the new release as I have done in the past :(

[rod singleton (rod40cool)]

Just thought I'd add that I've tried Gnome shell and Gnome Flashback sessions and Autokey wont respond to key presses in there either. Red somewhere else that someone has tried Xfce in 13.10 and that worked but I can't confirm that.

[Anthony Borrow (arborrow)]

autokey-gtk seems to launch fine but does not function. I am also noticing 100% cpu utilization in top as mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autokey/+bug/1075402. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help troubleshoot the issue. Peace - Anthony

[rod singleton (rod40cool)]

Agree Anthony, I too noticed CPU go high. Have also tried using the Xfce desktop by switching at logon during Light Display Manager on the same system but alas same deal. As a work-around I thought I'd try autohotkey (installed via winetricks) but having trouble getting it to recognize hotkeys in native Ubuntu apps (works fine in Windows apps launched under Wine) so until this works it's not really a valid work-around. Will keep trying.
Happy to help troubleshoot/test also.
Rod

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

If associating this with the Unity package is "Invalid", then what else could have changed that would have made this suddenly stop working on 09/06/2013, after having ran autokey-gtk just fine the previous 8 days?

[Christopher Townsend (townsend)]

I believe this is marked Invalid for Unity since it has been confirmed that this occurs with Gnome Shell, Gnome Flashback, and Xfce as well.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

After investigation, this is because of the broken python3 migration of python-xlib.
I'm marking this bug a duplicate of that one, and I'm going to upload a fix to saucy.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Marc, your awesome. Thank you!

[Anthony Borrow (arborrow)]

I just upgraded everything on saucy to the latest and I reinstalled autokey and now things seem to be working fine. Many thanks Marc for your work on this. Peace - Anthony

[Andreas Jonsson (sonofjon)]

I'd like to repoen this bug (I don't think it is a duplicate of bug #1231453.). I am running AutoKey-GTK on a fresh Saucy install with python-xlib - 0.14+20091101-1ubuntu2 installed but neither abbreviations or hotkeys work, as reported earlier.

When I use abbreviations empty spaces or lines are added instead of the intended text.

When I press a hotkey, nothing happens.

Besides this, AutoKey-GTK does not appear as an indicator in the indicator bar.

[Andreas Jonsson (sonofjon)]

Correction: When I press a hotkey, empty spaces or lines are added instead of the intended text (just as when using abbreviations).

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Is what you're talking about the same as bug #1243324 ?

[Ed Greenberg (edg-greenberg)]

I've just installed Saucy and have the following debug log capture from autokey-gtk. This took place after a right click and selection of a phrase to send.

2013-11-06 05:54:23,319 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:27,149 DEBUG - phrase-menu - Sorting phrase menu by usage count
2013-11-06 05:54:27,152 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:34,718 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:35,100 DEBUG - iomediator - Send via clipboard
2013-11-06 05:54:35,102 DEBUG - interface - Sending string: u'Morning Tasks, Tickets, Calls, Emails'
2013-11-06 05:54:35,104 ERROR - interface - Error in X event loop thread
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autokey/interface.py", line 116, in __eventLoop
    method(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autokey/interface.py", line 500, in __sendStringClipboard
    self.__fillClipboard(string)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/autokey/interface.py", line 537, in __fillClipboard
    self.clipBoard.set_text(string.encode("utf-8"))
TypeError: set_text() takes exactly 3 arguments (2 given)
2013-11-06 05:54:36,124 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:36,750 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:37,391 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:38,456 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:38,866 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer
2013-11-06 05:54:47,076 DEBUG - service - Received mouse click - resetting buffer

This also happens when hitting a hotkey combination. I hope this helps.

[Andreas Jonsson (sonofjon)]

Please cancel my request above to reopen this bug. Both abbreviations and shortcuts now work fine for me. Not sure what happened.

[Volker Siegel (vsiegel)]

In accord with comments 17 and 22, it seems fixed.

[Che (che-fisher)]

I am experiencing this bug on Ubuntu LTS 18.04 with AutoKey-GTK v0.95.1 (python v3.6).

I can trigger the script manually however hot keys and abbreviations don't work (they never trigger my scripts, or phrases).

[Che (che-fisher)]

Please excuse the previous post, it's a bug with AutoKey not liking non alphanumeric abbreviations. Updated abbreviation from "dp:s" (deploy staging) to "dps" and it works fine now. Just a little FYI for anyone landing here.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Good to know. I start all my abbreviations with a semicolon ";". I've never used a colon though.