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Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?)

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  Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?) Tim Hume <tim@nomuka.com> - 2018-01-11 23:50 +0100
    Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?) Glenn English <ghe2001@gmail.com> - 2018-01-12 02:30 +0100
    Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?) Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> - 2018-01-12 03:20 +0100
      Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?) Tim Hume <tim@nomuka.com> - 2018-01-12 09:50 +0100
        Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2018-01-12 10:30 +0100

#190962 — Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?)

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Hi everyone,

I've encountered a strange problem where my keyboard layout/language changes when I'm typing. I'm running on Debian buster, upgraded with all the latest updates. But I think this problem has been around for a while (a few months at least). It is reproducible.

1. Open an xfce4-terminal or Libre Office Writer (and I suspect other programs will work too)
2. Type slowly the "pipe" character followed by the "space" character: "| ". This will produce the desired results.
3. Type rapidly the above two character combination and the keyboard language changes. As you can guess, this two character combination is extremely common when typing on the command line, and having the keyboard language change mid stream is not good.

To the best of my knowledge, the keyboard language changes from English to what I think is Arabic (which runs from right to left). But it might be one of the other right to left languages from that part of the world.

I have no clue how to change back to English other than killing and restarting the affected program, which is highly annoying.

Has anyone else encountered this problem, and does anyone know a fix?

Cheers,

Tim

Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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#190963

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 10:40 PM, Tim Hume <tim@nomuka.com> wrote:

> Has anyone else encountered this problem, and does anyone know a fix?

Very interesting and no real idea how to fix it, but similar actions.

I tried your pipe-space recipe, and it killed Tor, my connection to
Gmail. (Re-connect Tor.)

And the other day, the xfce4 terminal started ignoring the letter 's'.
I know for sure it wasn't the keyboard, but a reboot made it stop. I
can't think of a reasonable explanation of how this could happen.

--
Glenn English

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#190965

On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Tim Hume wrote:
> I've encountered a strange problem where my keyboard layout/language
> changes when I'm typing. I'm running on Debian buster, upgraded with
> all the latest updates.

I'm not certain, but I wonder if you're accidentally hitting the layout
switch key when you type '| ' quickly. Often it's mapped to shift-caps
or something like that.

setxkbmap -print; should tell you what your default keymap is set to and
what the possible alternates are. [There may also be an XFCE specific
way of setting this.]


-- 
Don Armstrong                      https://www.donarmstrong.com

"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak
up for them as have no voices."
 -- Grandma Aching in _The Wee Free Men_ by Terry Pratchett p227

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#190970

>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?)
>Local Time: 12 January 2018 1:09 PM
>UTC Time: 12 January 2018 02:09
>From: don@debian.org
>To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
>On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Tim Hume wrote:
>>I've encountered a strange problem where my keyboard layout/language
>> changes when I'm typing. I'm running on Debian buster, upgraded with
>> all the latest updates.
>>
> I'm not certain, but I wonder if you're accidentally hitting the layout
> switch key when you type '| ' quickly. Often it's mapped to shift-caps
> or something like that.
>
> setxkbmap -print; should tell you what your default keymap is set to and
> what the possible alternates are. [There may also be an XFCE specific
> way of setting this.]
>
>
>
>Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com

I don't think I'm accidentally hitting the layout switch key. I can reliably reproduce this problem when I'm typing in both Libre Office and xfce4-terminal.

I've found a solution for the terminal; I've switched to using st (a cut-down terminal emulator). This doesn't have the problem. Plain old xterm doesn't have the problem either as far as I can tell. I wonder if xfce4-terminal and Libre Office share a common buggy library, or something like that?

Cheers,

Tim Hume

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#190973

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Hash: SHA1

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 03:47:45AM -0500, Tim Hume wrote:
> >-------- Original Message --------
> >Subject: Re: Keyboard language randomly changes to Arabic(?)
> >Local Time: 12 January 2018 1:09 PM
> >UTC Time: 12 January 2018 02:09
> >From: don@debian.org
> >To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> >
> >On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Tim Hume wrote:
> >>I've encountered a strange problem where my keyboard layout/language
> >> changes when I'm typing. I'm running on Debian buster, upgraded with
> >> all the latest updates.
> >>
> > I'm not certain, but I wonder if you're accidentally hitting the layout
> > switch key when you type '| ' quickly. Often it's mapped to shift-caps
> > or something like that.
> >
> > setxkbmap -print; should tell you what your default keymap is set to and
> > what the possible alternates are. [There may also be an XFCE specific
> > way of setting this.]
> >
> >
> >
> >Don Armstrong https://www.donarmstrong.com
> 
> I don't think I'm accidentally hitting the layout switch key. I can reliably reproduce this problem when I'm typing in both Libre Office and xfce4-terminal.

You can verify (or falsify) that with xinput (same-named package).

Sample session:

  tomas@trotzki:~$ xinput list
  ⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
  ⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
  ⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  ⎜   ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint                     id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
  ⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
      ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ↳ Sleep Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
      ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons                    id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]
  tomas@trotzki:~$ xinput test 9
  key release 36 
  key press   65 
   key release 65 
  key press   62 
  key release 62 
  key press   50 
  key press   37 
  [...]

The gory details in the manpage :)

Cheers
- -- tomás
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