keyboard layout lost when typing

[Frederik Elwert]

I am using onboard on Ubuntu Oneiric. I am using a laptop with a physical keyboard and onboard together to experiment a bit with onboard before installing Ubuntu on a tablet.

When I launch onboard, it uses the correct keyboard layout (German, in my case). But as soon as I type with onboard, it changes to en_US (I guess). Interestingly, as soon as I type on the physical keyboard, onboard switches back to the German layout.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

The problem is also occurring on my system since some time. I wonder whether it is an Onboard issue or an issue of unstable oneiric.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

Some additional information:

Onboard not only shows the wrong layout, but typing with it also sends the characters shown by the wrong layout.

After typing on a hardware keyboard, Onboard shows the correct layout, but clicking on Onboard does not sent the key of the correct layout, but the key of the wrong layout appearing immediately after clicking the key.

Moreover, the indicator to switch layout does not work either, when Onboard shows the wrong layout. However, when Onboard shows the correct layout (after typing a key on the hardware keyboard), Onboard follows the layout changes done with the indicator icon.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Thank you for the bug report. Unfortunately wasn't able to reproduce this problem yet.

I remember hearing of this issue before. Gerd experienced it briefly on Fedora 15 with Gnome3. What helped there was deleting keyboard settings in gnome and recreating them.

If this doesn't solve the problem for you, please be so kind and post the output of
setxkbmap -query
setxkbmap -print

and please provide detailed step by step instructions of what you are doing. Maybe I'm missing a detail here.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

What do you mean by deleting the keyboard settings?

[Frederik Elwert (frederik-elwert)]

@marmuta: I tested this. Deleting and recreating the keyboard settings indeed helps, but only until the next login. So after reboot, the problem reappears.

Here is the desired output:

$ setxkbmap -query
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: de
$ setxkbmap -print
xkb_keymap {
 xkb_keycodes { include "evdev+aliases(qwertz)" };
 xkb_types { include "complete" };
 xkb_compat { include "complete" };
 xkb_symbols { include "pc+de+inet(evdev)" };
 xkb_geometry { include "pc(pc105)" };
};

I don’t really know which “detailed steps” I could provide. I’m not doing much besides launching onboard and typing on it.

@Francesco: In the language settings in the control center, I added a random keyboard layout, removed my original (German) layout, re-added it, and then removed the randomly added layout. A bit complicated, but only this way I could remove and re-add the keyboard layout.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Thanks Frederik. I've installed a fresh partition with Oneiric and German as the default keyboard layout. This did the trick, it's easily reproducible.

At first glance Onboard appears to react correctly. The system actually changes the keyboard map from "de" to "us". The keys displayed in Onboard and the keys sent on clicking seem consistent.
Now, why the keyboard map changes, I have no idea yet. Will dig deeper.

Another bandaid: running
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
stops the layout switches for the session too. And here too they are back on reboot.

@Francesco (when you are back): I had asked Gerd what exactly he did, but didn't get a reply yet. He might be on holiday too. I believe he meant removing and re-adding the layouts in the gnome GUI as Frederik described.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

I now believe this is a problem with oneirics xkb configuration and/or the xserver. It seems there is little that Onboard can do about it at the moment.
I've filed a fresh bug #837456 for Xorg with as much information I could come up with and will mark this one as a duplicate. A dedicated X bug may increase the chances for a fix.

The best workaround I could come up so far is
$ setxkbmap de

but this still has to be run once in every session.