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    colemak layout broke under linux/x server recently

    • Started by hni
    • 6 Replies:
    • hni
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    • Registered: 10-Feb-2010
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    Hi
    I used to set the layout on my think pad t42 with
    setxkbmap gb -variant colemak
    and is has worked fine for about a year now. But last week after an update (not sure which packages were updated), my keys are now out of order. Only the bottom row is affected. Before my keys were like this (from left to right):
    \zxcvbkm,./   but now they are like this:
    zxcvbkm,.\/

    I.e. the forward slash is now the rightmost key and before it was the leftmost key. This is disastrous because it means that all keys in the bottom row have moved one position to the left.

    Interestingly when I do
    setxkbmap us -variant colemak, all the letters are in the right place. Unfortunately this in not a good permanent solution because some of the special symbols are in the wrong place now.

    a ~$ uname -a
    Linux alittleroisin 2.6.32-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jan 29 08:50:05 UTC 2010 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

    X.Org X Server 1.7.4.901 (1.7.5 RC 1)


    Any help appreciated
    Arian

    Last edited by hni (10-Feb-2010 13:42:31)
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    • From: Belgium
    • Registered: 26-Feb-2008
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    This was changed in xkeyboard-config 1.7, as a result from this bug report: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22735

    It's broken, it should be fixed.

    (In the meantime you can revert to xkeyboard-config 1.6.)

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    • hni
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    Awesome, thanks for the quick reply.
    FYI I am using xkeyboard-config 1.8-1. Assuming that before the upgrade I was using 1.7 (which I can't verify now) 1.7 seems to have been working correctly still.

    EDIT: I was wrong, I seems like I was using 1.6 before I upgraded to 1.8-1

    EDIT: downgrading seems to be difficult as X seems to depend on xkeyboard-config 1.8 now unfortunately. Or do you think I can ignore the warning my package manager gives and downgrade anyway?

    Last edited by hni (10-Feb-2010 14:31:18)
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    • From: Belgium
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    You're using Arch Linux, right?  They jumped from xkeyboard-config 1.6 to 1.8, 10 days ago:
    http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/package … &rev=65515

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    • From: Belgium
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    hni said:

    EDIT: downgrading seems to be difficult as X seems to depend on xkeyboard-config 1.8 now unfortunately. Or do you think I can ignore the warning my package manager gives and downgrade anyway?

    Two options:

    - force the downgrade, I don't think it will hurt but no guarantees :-)
    - revert the change manually: locate your symbols/gb file and run the bad change through patch -R

    The latter is probably best so your packages stay in sync and up-to-date, but your package manager may override the change with the next update.  Alternatively, you can revert the change in a copy of the gb file and use that instead.

    Last edited by ghen (10-Feb-2010 14:49:06)
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    • hni
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    I downloaded  xkeyboard-config 1.6 from the Arch Linux repository for outdated packages here: http://arm.konnichi.com/extra/os/i686/x … pkg.tar.gz and then merged the symbols/gb file with the one on my system. Everything works fine now.

    @ghen: three cheers to you, you made my day.

    Arian

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    • From: Belgium
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    The problem has now been fixed upstream.  xkeyboard-config 1.9 (release scheduled end of May) will contain the correct UK Colemak layout again.

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