Text's letter spacing fails with localized keyboard layout

[Rozencweig]

(Sorry for this very bad english...)
I have the latest Insckape's version (0.46) And I would like to use the letter spacing tool...
The "Inkscape keyboard and mouse reference" tells me :

Alt+> expand line/paragraph by 1 pixel
Shift+Alt+> expand line/paragraph by 10 pixels
Alt+< contract line/paragraph by 1 pixel
Shift+Alt+< contract line/paragraph by 10 pixels

But when I do theese advice, It's like if I was doing :

Ctrl+Alt+> make the text object taller by 1 pixel
Shift+Ctrl+Alt+> make the text object taller by 10 pixels
Ctrl+Alt+< make the text object shorter by 1 pixel
Shift+Ctrl+Alt+< make the text object shorter by 10 pixels

I tried to put the Shift before, or the caps Lock, or with Alt Gr, but it still doesn't work...
Could you help me to solve this little "bug" ?

(I forgot to mention : I have a french keyboard and Win Vista...)

[Pablo Trabajos (pajarico)]

It works for me, although rotating commands dont't work in my Spanish keyboard. Could someone test it with a French keyboard?

However, in the reference it's said "These commands work when editing a regular text object. Kerning does not work in flowed text." What kind of text object are you editing? Please attach a file if you feel unsure.

[Pablo Trabajos (pajarico)]

Given that you get a different result instead of no result at all, your problem might be related to the layout. The thing is that the keys are not well chosen for non-english keyboard layout. For instance: in Spanish I have > and < in the same key which means that to get > I've to input Shift+<. So, how should I input these commands?

Alt+> expand line/paragraph by 1 pixel
Shift+Alt+> expand line/paragraph by 10 pixels
Alt+< contract line/paragraph by 1 pixel
Shift+Alt+< contract line/paragraph by 10 pixels

To get Alt+> I have to input Shift+Alt+<, but it is the opposite command. In reality what I got is this:
Alt+< contract line/paragraph by 1 pixel (OK)
Shift+Alt+< expand line/paragraph by 10 pixels (not OK, it should contract)
And the rest of options are not allowed because the keys are already taken.

Opinions?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Confirmed - it doesn't work for many localized keyboards (mine as well ;-). There are other bug reports (some of them referencing non-qwerty keyboards) I can search for later.

The issue is with the way 'modifiers' are used in the keyboard shortcut file. AFAIU there's no good solution to this issue the way it is currently implemented.

(hint: I have '<' and '>' on the same key. '>' is 'Shift' +'<'. If I need the shift modifier to generate a 'key' like '>', then I can't use a keyboard shortcut that is defined as "Shift + some other mod + >" because it always gets interpreted by Inkscape as "Shift + some other mod + <". I can't press Shift twice ;-)

(rotate '[,]' is even worse because you can't remap it to another shortcut… the command isn't available at all. Above commands could be remapped in 'share/keys/default.xml' AFAIK)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

oops - I didn't see your last comment while I was writing mine - did we descibe the same issue?

[Pablo Trabajos (pajarico)]

Yes, it is the same problem. Inkscape needs custom key remapping including some defaults for non-english layouts that should be picked depending on the selected language for the interface.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

That would be a huge task - consider that there are vendor specific differences as well (win32 keyboards are different from mac keyboards) and model-specific layouts (many laptops only have a reduced set of keys, netbooks probably even less) - all this on top of the localized language versions! … plus the already included variants for users that switched from other vector applications to Inkscape.

I see this as 'Won't Fix' until the keyboard shortcuts have a different implementation (one that doesn't assume that 'key x' is always available without any modifier, but is based on 'keycodes' + 'modifiers' - similar to xmodmap keyboard mapping utility of X11)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

duplicate of bug #171103 “Manual Kerning on non-US keyboards”' (or vice versa ?)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> Above commands could be remapped in 'share/keys/default.xml'
It seems that (like the 'rotate' commands) they bypass the verbs and the keybindings based on verbs… I could not find a related entry in the current default keybinding file.

[Crus-T (onfaitarde)]

This bug may be linked to :

Bug #165716 “keyboard shortcuts don't work with foreign keyboard layouts”
Bug #165755 “keys inaccessible with localized/platform-specific keyboards”
Bug #167906 “"Alt" keycodes used twice in german translation”
Bug #168887 “german keyboard: path editing keys with AltGr don't work”
Bug #178738 “Path Effects shortcut mixed with Division (Shift+Ctrl+7)”
Bug #181393 “View shortcuts don't work on french keyboard”
Bug #266913 “Text's letter spacing doe not work at all”
Bug #338302 “Problem in rotation text using ALT + ]”

This keymapping problem seems to be persistent from 2004.
I think it is critical to fix it in order to improve Inkscape user experience.

Note that functions indicated in cited bugs are not presents as verbs in "default.xlm" file (inkscape v.0.47-3 win XP). These functions cannot be reached be changing AZERTY keyboard mapping to QWERTY keyboard mapping.

Maybe a user friendly editable list for shortcut commands would partially fix this (as long as not everybody use all shortcuts, many people could therefore fix this in their own way)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Linking as duplicate to bug #165755 “keys inaccessible with localized/platform-specific keyboards”. Please add a comment here and revert the duplicate status if you don't agree and think these are different issues.