Logitech DiNovo MediaPad should not toggle Numlock

[Kristoffer Lundén]

Equipment:

* Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo M3438G laptop
* Logitech DiNovo MediaPad via bluetooth

Short summary:

Putting the Logitech MediaPad in numerical mode also toggles Numlock, making laptop keyboards with numerical keypad emulation on the regular keys unusable. Logitech MediaPad should not toggle hardware Numlock, but input should still be recognized properly.

Longer description:

The MediaPad is basically an external numerical keypad. The laptop does not have a separate numeric keypad, but uses numlock to toggle some regular keys to numeric mode. So I'm using the MediaPad for this instead.

The keypad has three "mode" buttons: numerical, navigation and calculator (the last one is built in and does not communicate with the computer).

Problem is that, when I put the MediaPad into numerical input mode, Ubuntu takes this as toggling Numlock on (and navigation takes it off), which means that when using the MediaPad I can't use large parts of my laptop keyboard normally.

So, I would like to be able to use my MediaPad in numerical mode without toggling hardware Numlock.

I'm sure this could be solved technically, by noticing (via udev?) that it's a MediaPad doing the toggle and doing some remapping.

What I'm not as sure of is if it would have any other implications for applications, if anything needs to know that Numlock is toggled or not (for input of numbers vs navigation, that is).

When using either a laptop or the DiNovo regular keyboard, there is no conflict with those since they don't have a numeric part, and I would think that it would be extremely uncommon to use a full-size keyboard and the MediaPad together, since that would, well, not make any sense. :)

[Alex Mayorga (alex-mayorga)]

I can confirm this happens in my Dell Latitude CPxJ as well.

I concur it would be an advantageous feature, given that the exact same behavior described happens in Windows.

Kristoffer,

I have to ask, have you managed to make the dongle of this set to play nicely with Ubuntu/Bluez? If so I'd appreciate if you pointed me to a how-to on that regard.

Thanks in advance,
Alex

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

Alex, see bug #66884 for the Logitech dongle + Bluez - should be fixed in Feisty though I haven't tried it yet.

[Alex Mayorga (alex-mayorga)]

Kristoffer,

Any chance you know how to make it work in Edgy (6.10)?

Thanks in advance and thanks on the heads up.

Regards,
Alex

----- Original Message ----
From: Kristoffer Lundén <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 3:21:33 AM
Subject: [Bug 61413] Re: Logitech DiNovo MediaPad should not toggle Numlock

Alex, see bug #66884 for the Logitech dongle + Bluez - should be fixed
in Feisty though I haven't tried it yet.

--
Logitech DiNovo MediaPad should not toggle Numlock
https://launchpad.net/bugs/61413

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Sorry
Well I would suggest you try with http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/tribe2 BUT
watchout! according to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/123920 and
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez-utils/+bug/32415
device may not work anymore.

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

Ummm Paul, aren't you confusing the two issues here? There's nothing fixed about this in tribe 2 or later, so I assumed you were answering Alex how to get things working at all. Why would you close a bug as invalid because it hasn't been fixed?

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Sorry, I may have close this one too fast.
We do close bug waiting for more than 1 month without having got an answer.
I have taken my previous comment as a request to try if Tribe-2 would have fix this issue.
Now that I see you tried with Tribe-2, and that you are there to answer further question, and because I don't know much about this kind of hardware, but it does seems to have enough information for a developer to give an answer, I am marking this bug as Confirmed and un-assigning me from it.

You did well to ask me why I were closing.

[Robert Lange (rcl24)]

To throw my hat in the ring, I think that the default behavior of the Mediapad *should* be to toggle numlock-mode. On any standard keyboard configuration, this should pose no problem and is probably what the user wanted.

That said, I think this is a valid bug for laptop computer users, but the bug needs to be recast -- the behavior that needs to be changed is not the Mediapad toggling numlock-mode. Instead, what needs to be changed is that toggling on numlock-mode, in general, should not activate the special 3rd-level number keys embedded into some laptop keyboards.

It is possible that in some laptops, numlock-mode activates, at the BIOS level, the embedded 3rd-level number keys. That sucks for those laptops, but it should be handled as a special case for those laptops, and should not affect the operation of the Mediapad in general. In general, when a user used the Mediapad number pad for numerical data entry, the user wants the computer in numlock-mode.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

As a useful data point, can someoen see if this is still the situation on Intrepid (2.6.27 kernel and 4.x bluez packages)

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

Robert, I doubt that this is ever what the user wanted. If the user wanted to use numlock-mode on *another* keyboard, why press this button on the mediapad? Why not press the numlock button that is exactly where the numlock should be? This setup with two separate keyboards is explicitly designed to be able to use parts of it in different situations, and this behavior breaks it. It is also clear that this button is not a direct mapping, it's special for this type of mediapad, it even has three distinct modes.

Mario, sorry, I wish I could - but my mediapad is currently packed away in another town, and I don't think I'll be able to fetch it in the short term. Anyone else?

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

No change has been made that affects this.

Please don't post canned messages without reading the description and discussion just to get your 5-a-day. It's much too common. Thanks.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Sorry if it looks like that but that wasn't my intention. I saw that Mario set the bug to Incomplete and asked you a question that you weren't able to answer back then, so I thought I would ping you to check if you can answer his question now, since the bug has been lying around incomplete for over half a year now. Judging from your answer I'm setting the status back to confirmed.

[Konrad Zapałowicz (kzapalowicz)]

This is reported against an old version of Ubuntu and many things has changed since then. Because of that we won't fix this issue however if this behavior repeats on a modern version please fill a bug report against it and we will take it from there.