Ubuntu
gnome-control-center package

  1. Bug #59616
  2. Comment #26

Comment 26 for bug 59616

Revision history for this message
Martin von Wittich (martin.von.wittich) wrote :

I just tried it again, and I think I've found the underlying issue. As I disabled the option 'Keyboard Preferences' -> 'Allow to turn accessibility features on and off from the keyboard', I had to reactivate this to test it.

As I now know, the required action is to hold SHIFT for 8 seconds to toggle the 'Slow Keys' feature, and I did just that. After 8 seconds, a dialog popped up, asking me "Do you want to activate Slow Keys?" (possible answers: 'Don't activate', 'Activate') - just as expected.

What I did not expect though was this: the feature gets enabled as soon as the dialog pops up; only when you hit 'Don't activate', it will get disabled again. And to make this even worse: the dialog tends to remain hidden behind maximized windows. In the beginning, it would pop up over my maximized Firefox window, but after I did this several times, it will only "pop under" the Firefox window. So if I didn't know about this, the 'slow keys' feature would now be enabled, I wouldn't know why. If I would now minimize all windows, I would see that dialog; but most users (as I did back then I guess) will freak out and e.g. try to re-login or to reboot the computer, leading to a permanently enabled 'slow keys' feature.

My suggested fix: disable 'Allow to turn accessibility features on and off from the keyboard' by default (I don't think there are really people relying on this), and fix that dialog so it won't enable the 'slow keys' feature until the user has clicked on 'Activate'.

Additionally, the focused button in that dialog should be 'Don't activate' (why focus the 'Help' button?!), and a warning like "WARNING: if you don't know what the Slow Keys feature is, don't enable it! You will have problems with typing when you activate it!" would be nice.

BTW - this is a duplicate: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/41427
this could be a duplicate: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/195805 (I tested it, you also need to hold CTRL+ALT+F1 for a moment when you want to switch consoles with slow keys enabled. I won't test CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE though ;))