GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 559115
When custom keyboard layout is used wrong characters appears when use with dead key
Last modified: 2016-11-25 18:14:08 UTC
In my case keyboard layout is created with "Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator" (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx). I have latvian keyboard layout with "'" and "~" as dead keys to write latvian symbols. When I hit "'"+"a" or "~"+"a" to get "ā" in reality I have "á", "'"+"s" to get "š" I have "ś", there are no such symbols like "ģ" and "ķ" instead I hear PC speeker beep should be in reality ā á č ć ē é ģ pc speeker beep ī í ķ pc speeker beep ļ ĺ ņ ń š ś ū ú ž ź ŗ ŕ ō ó GTK apps tested planner and GIMP on Windows XP SP3 As far as I know everything is OK with default windows Latvian qwerty layout where dead key is R"Alt", but the fact is that defacto standard in Latvia is "'" or/and "~" as dead key. +++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #332122 +++ I'm using the U.S. Keyboard layout, but with the configuration to write spanish chars, as á, é, etc... And, when I type '"' + SPACE, a '"' is written, but when I type '"' + '"', instead of writing '""', it's writing '¨' I THINK it's a bug, but i'm not quite sure... It's happening with GTK Apps on both Windows (XP-SP2) and Linux (Ubuntu Breeze and Dapper)
It is known that some of the more convoluted even Microsoft-supplied keyboard layouts don't work 100%. (Like the Czech and Canadian multilingual.) So no wonder that the same goes for 3rd-party ones. Unfortunately it is not trivial to fix. The code involved is not that straightforward. Partially this is because the API offered to the upper layers is inspired by X11 concepts. Or perhaps more truthfully, it is not easy for me personally to gather enough inspiration to fix this class of problems. Others who perhaps personally are affected are welcome to, though. GTK+ is Open Source, and patches are welcome. That's how Open Source is supposed to work. I will be glad to help you or somebody understand the code (if they at least show signs of knowing what they are doing). Check for me in #gtk+ on irc.gimp.org, or mail the gtk-devel-list when you have technical questions about the relevant code. Btw, how sure are you that the layout you mention is the "defacto" standard? Why would Microsoft on purpose support just some layout that is not used by many in Latvia? Are you sure that your impression of what layout the majority of Windows users in Latvia use is skewed? Only a small part of Windows users belong to the "hacker" (in the "software/computer enthusiast/expert sense") community, that's surely the case also in Latvia. Maybe it's just that community that use the "defacto" standard, and most normal office workers that use computers all day use the Microsoft default one? Sorry for rambling...
Is GTK+ incompatible with custom dead keys at all?
Fixing bug 569581 fixes this for standard Latvian keyboard layouts included in Windows 10 (as far as i can test). It *should* also fix this for custom layouts, but i have no way to test that. If custom layouts are still broken, file a new bug. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 569581 ***