GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 468092
alt+shift change keyboard breaks alt+shift+tab when changing applications
Last modified: 2009-04-15 20:53:39 UTC
Please describe the problem: If I have alt+shift key combination active to change the keyboard between my two defined keyboard layouts, I cannot use the alt+shift+tab combination. When I am switching applications, I hit alt+tab it goes forward, the key combination alt+shift+tab which goes backwards does not work. This is probably because of the inteference with alt+shift. I need this setup because I have windows users who are used to using these key combinations. Steps to reproduce: 1. Set alt+shift to change the keyboard layout (have more than one layout) 2. Have three or more applications open 3. alt+tab several times (you see the change app selector with the highlighted application always the next to the right each time tab is pressed) 4. try alt+shift+tab, it does not rotate to the left (which should be the opposite as alt+shift+tab). Actual results: alt+shift+tab does not appear to do anything Expected results: Move the blue box to the left (opposite of alt+tab) Does this happen every time? Yes, without fail. alt+shift+tab works fine if I use another key combination to change the keyboard than alt+shift Other information: Although I marked the ticket as 'minor' it is frustrating for me. It is also annoying for other windows users, it would be great if you could fix this. Thanks, David
When I investigated this with my gutsy installed (pretty much 2.20 beta 1). I see the following behaviour: When pressing alt-shift I see the keyboard layout change (the keyboard indicator applet will show you this) and then if I pulse tab I see forward rotation only. To be honest though I would have thought having the keyboard change when you start your cycle (and potentially at the end) would be very confusing for your users.
I have tested this on Gentoo Linux using Gnome 2.12, 2.14, 2.16. Using Ubuntu (both 7.4 and 7.10 beta). In all the cases the behaviour is the same.
This is probably a NOTGNOME issue. It is related to Xorg, and the fact that once Alt+Shift is pressed, the X server processes immediately the shortcut. I cannot find the relevant report at bugs.freedesktop.org so that to close this. A workaround is to change the shortcut for changing layouts to something else. The "default" appears to be Alt+AltGr, though users also use other variations.
It is definitely NOTGNOME. It is the way Xorg works.