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whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

[solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

Hi!

For some weeks now, my (xfce) terminal (and only that one instance of it I'm working in) somehow ends up in a mode that gives me one character like those for every 2-4 letter key presses combined (numbers work fine):

ዳስዳስዳስፍግረግፍቭረኣግህ ጅዝስፍድግህባ<ወርጋሰውርድቭግፍረኣርግይደርጋረድ

Have not been able to figure out why this happens / how I turn it back (without closing that terminal / opening a new one). When I use "setxkbmap", it changes the special characters accordingly but the letter keys stay in "press-multiple-times-to-assemble-nonlatin" mode.

Looks like this could be some "normal" feature to enter nonlating script that I should be aware of and should know how to turn on/off?
What combination of keys or whatever do I keep accidentally hitting?
Or is it a bug that I'm somehow triggering?

Using utf8, kde / plasma, xfce4-terminal. But it happened with vanilla xfce, too on a different / new user account. And not sure where else, might be universal.

Last edited by whoops (2016-06-06 17:41:40)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,715

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

Google translate thinks those are Sudanese.  Anything in your Locale settings associated with Sudan?

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whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

Nope.

Sudanese? Depending on which combination of characters exactly I used, google "identified" it as "Amharic" most of the time... sometimes as "Chinese"...

Shouldn't it be happening for the whole x-session / user / or even system-wide if locales were the problem? It affects only a single window. Only happened with xfce terminal so far, but that's the only place where I'm typing a lot, so...

Anyway, so I guess your answer means this is not perfectly normal? For a moment I was afraid I'd have found "the love-child of caps-lock and ctrl" (a key that switches input mode to "multiple key presses per special character" as a way to enter unicode characters) just now after so many years and it only took me that long to realize this exists xD

Ok, so then... this could be a bug. I'll switch to konsole for a few days (hoping it's not still as glitchy-crashy as the last time I tried it) to see if it happens there, too.

parchd

Member

Registered: 2014-03-08

Posts: 421

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

Input methods can be changed on a per-window basis, and it sounds like that is what you're changing. It sounds like you are toggling a change to "Amharic (EZ+)" or similar.
To switch it back, try right clicking in the terminal window, going to "input methods", and selecting "System" or "Simple"

If that does the trick, you just need to find out which key combination triggers it. I haven't needed to play with input methods for years and years, but I think Super+Space is a common combination. Unless I just set that myself because it was convenient.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

Alright!!! I remember there used to be that option now, thanks! There wasn't though:

My default dark xfce gtk theme was totally broken (maybe even all the xfce gtk engines)! I messed with that stuff many years ago and crammed the changes I made into /etc somehow. Then I switched to another theme... and when kde broke that new theme (breeze?) recently, I switched back to the xfce theme which is when the problems started.

I'm guessing I've been clicking on an invisible button or something...  Seems weird that it always changed to "Amharic" though, or maybe I just suck at telling nonlatin scripts apart... anyway, now that I deleted / restored that gtk stuff, I hope the problem will disappear (I'll mark this as solved if it doesn't happen again in the next few days).

Last edited by whoops (2016-06-02 09:39:22)

Loose_Control

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-01-11

Posts: 136

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

and when kde broke that new theme (breeze?) recently, I switched back to the xfce theme which is when the problems started.

Just a minor correction GTK 3.20 broke like every theme... nothing to the with KDE or anyone else.

whoops

Member

Registered: 2009-03-19

Posts: 891

Re: [solved] Can't figure out why my keyboard suddenly ወርጋሰርድቭግፍረኣርግደርጋረድ

There really were invisible buttons. I sometimes clicked them when I tried to click away the context menu.