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noobstar

Member

Registered: 2019-05-28

Posts: 4

[Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

I have i3 as my window manager, no desktop environment. I haven't bound Control + Space to anything, however, it doesn't register in any program.

When inside i3, pressing Control + Space does not register in any program.
I have tested this with showkey -a, and Control + Space produces no output. When running from a TTY, the keypress is correctly registered:

$ showkey -a

Press any keys - Ctrl-D will terminate this program

^@        0 0000 0x00

When pressing Control and Space separately in xev, both are correctly received. However, when pressing them together, the following output appears:

KeyPress event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3c00001,
    root 0x1e5, subw 0x0, time 26368664, (752,226), root:(2043,983),
    state 0x0, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

FocusOut event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3c00001,
    mode NotifyGrab, detail NotifyAncestor

FocusOut event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3c00001,
    mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyPointer

FocusIn event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3c00001,
    mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyAncestor

KeymapNotify event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    keys:  4294967269 0   0   0   32  0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

KeyRelease event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x3c00001,
    root 0x1e5, subw 0x0, time 26370201, (752,226), root:(2043,983),
    state 0x4, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

The FocusOut and FocusIn events lead me to believe that Control + Space is opening some other window, but no such window appears.

After some googling I found that this is often caused by ibus, but I do not have ibus installed.

Any help is greatly appreciated, as this combination of keys is used in several programs I use daily. If I need to provide more info, I will.

Last edited by noobstar (2019-05-30 00:38:36)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,993

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

The xev output indicates that the shortcut is grabbed by something (probably i3?) - that something™ just doesn't do anything notable  to you.
This has nothing to do w/ opening a window, it's a technical detail about grabs because the input has to be directed somewhere.

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sincomil

Member

Registered: 2018-02-13

Posts: 106

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

@noobstar Did you use CTRL+Space as shortcut for switching keyboard layouts?

Last edited by sincomil (2019-05-29 07:23:47)

noobstar

Member

Registered: 2019-05-28

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

seth, thanks for the clarification.

sincomil, I've only set up regular qwerty, so I don't think it's being used for that.

qinohe

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2012-06-20

Posts: 1,494

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

It depends on your 'Mod' button.
Default configuration is

# change focus between tiling / floating windows
bindsym Mod1+space focus mode_toggle

If your mod button is Ctrl. then it is mapped, if you use another button for that, or changed the default config, it's okay.
Otherwise you should change it...

noobstar

Member

Registered: 2019-05-28

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

I have mod set to Mod4/super, and I don't have any space bindings at all in my ~/.config/i3/config, so I don't think it's related to those.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,993

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

xdotool key "XF86LogGrabInfo"

Consult your xorg log afterwards, the tail lists all clients grabbing shortcuts.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

noobstar

Member

Registered: 2019-05-28

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] "Control + Space" does not register in any program

Thanks so much seth! Doing that I was able to find a program using the combo (dunst) and removed it, and now the keys work.