Hitting the hotkey to switch keyboard layouts doesn't work by default.  http://blogs.gnome.org/sudaltsov/2008/03/23/xkb-suxx-c/ mentions this bug, but not a bug report...

Related upstream bugs:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523823
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514546
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4927

CCing Stefan.  Stefan, do you know what's up with the definitions for keyboard layouts?  My xkb-fu is not good enough to know what to do here :)

I have no idea either of this, but if Sergey says that it is not related to xkeyboard-config and it's somewhat deeper in X.Org, I believe him. If it will ever get adressed there is another topic. :-( 

Anyway, I'm wondering if this a new issue or why it pops up now?

(In reply to comment #4 from Stefan Dirsch)
> Anyway, I'm wondering if this a new issue or why it pops up now?

It started happening with openSUSE 11.0, I assume due to our updated xorg.  On 10.3 one could hit the default "left alt plus left alt" to switch keyboard layouts.  On 11.0 that doesn't work.

Don't you mean "LAlt + RAlt"? "LAlt + LAlt" sounds weird to me. 

I can't understand that this would be a new issue. It has been reported by Sergey already in Oct 2005. So maybe this is a new key combination default for switching keyboard layouts?

(In reply to comment #6 from Stefan Dirsch)
> Don't you mean "LAlt + RAlt"? "LAlt + LAlt" sounds weird to me. 

Errr, yes, I meant LAlt + RAlt :)

> I can't understand that this would be a new issue. It has been reported by
> Sergey already in Oct 2005. So maybe this is a new key combination default for
> switching keyboard layouts?

Nope, the default is the same (LAlt + RAlt), and it doesn't work anymore :(

I'll poke Sergey upstream to see if he has figured this one out.

> Nope, the default is the same (LAlt + RAlt), and it doesn't work anymore :(
Ok. I got a report for a similar issue (Bug #368673). But it only occurs, when
you use a static multi keyboard layout via xorg.conf. It doesn't happen when
you use setxkbmap afterwards. Somewhat related to the use of -xkm.

> I'll poke Sergey upstream to see if he has figured this one out.
Good idea. He definitely knows more about this stuff than me. :-)

So, mmh, this bug is assigned to me, but it really looks like something deeper in our stack (deeper as in "lower than GNOME" ;-)), like maybe in X. Anybody wanting to take it?

*** Bug 377546 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

So, that's a bug in Xorg, really. See the comments in http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4927

We can't do anything for now it seems, though. I propose to change the default keybinding to switch the layout to use be shift_l+shift_r. At least, it will work... (note that ctrl_l+ctrl_r seems to not work, like alt_l+alt_r).

So, I've changed the default to Shift_L+Shift_R. What we probably still want to do is to patch xkeyboard-config to comment out grp:alts_toggle and grp:ctrls_toggle from /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.xml (and probably in xorg.lst too) for now. This way, those non-working options will be hidden.

Stefan, can you do it? Or I can do it if you want me to do it.

Could you attach a patch? Then I will take care of it. Thanks!

Created attachment 214714 [details]
Remove non-working options

Here we go. I've removed the lines from base.lst (don't know if it's possible to only comment them out?), and commented them out from base.xml. They're still in sun.xml but I don't think it matters for us.

As far as I can tell, this is enough. I don't think it has side-effects, but maybe some of our configuration tools might depend on this -- I hadn't thought about it earlier...

Thanks. I've applied the patch for Factory/X11:XOrg now and verified that it works with SaX2 and kcontrol, i.e. Ctrl-Ctrl and Alt-Alt cannot be chosen any longer as toggle.

*** Bug 405237 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***