4

I used to use setxkbmap this way:

setxkbmap -layout us,se -variant ,kinesis -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle'

and be happy with it.

The layout swap used to happen at the release of alt_shift, only if no other key was pressed between the combo's press and release. This behavior was very useful, because it allowed me to e.g. M-< and M-> in emacs without switching layout.

Now the switch occurs at pressing alt_shift, and M-< never works in emacs (it doesn't, whatever the layout I start with).

I don't know what I did to change that behavior. The only thing I can recall is installing the Vertex theme for gnome, but surely it can't...?

Edit: other shortcuts became useless. alt+shift+d doesn't work in Chrome anymore.

Gauthier
  • 870

2 Answers2

2

Apparently, it's an old problem which has been remedied by a patch in Debian derivative distributions. This patch hasn't applied cleanly to XOrg 1.19 and has been dropped at least for Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/36812/comments/215.

Actual upstream bug is https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=865 with no clear solution. You might need to look for a solution for your distribution, but that bug is your starting point.

Nikolai Prokoschenko
  • 121
2

What Nikolai says.

For Ubuntu at least, as of April 7 2018, a PPA with a modified patch is available: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/36812/comments/218 , thanks to nrbrtx.

We have xorg developers to thank for this hoop jumping. They refuse to do anything because there's an xkb spec mandating this behaviour which they won't change.

So people in a large part of the world have to either change their preferred language switching combination or lose keyboard shortcuts with it.

Alexander Pavlov
  • 141