Bug 17500

*** Bug 17925 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I come from the duplicated bug 17925. My main issue is about the left, down & end keys:

When I press & hold the "down-arrow" key, the "left-arrow" key or the "End"
key, the delay (until the key starts to repeat) is longer than the other keys in the keyboard. I need to hold these keys pressed more time in order to
get repetition.

The issue, however, don't appear when you use the down-arrow key in the keypad
(the "2" key), the left-arrow in the keypad (the "4" key) or the "End" key in
the keypad (the "1" key).

More info is at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17925 .

(In reply to comment #2)

For me the arrow keys start working like other keys after running "xset r 113; xset r 116; xset r 2".

this is only compile-tested, not run-tested at all, but reasonably obvious, so:
http://people.freedesktop.org/~daniels/evdev-key-repeat.diff

(should probably look better than it does, but hey, i got up at 7am today.)

This patch indeed makes autorepeat work nicely, but for some reason either due to this patch or due to using the master branch of evdev (patch doesn't apply to 2.0.7 and I'm just about to go to bed so not enough time to test without the patch) ctrl-C seems to either crash or just restart the X server, not sure which, all I can see is that I get to log in again. Will try to investigate tomorrow.

Thank you,

So what happens seems to be that the key presses are sent to both X and console, so when I ctrl-C it interrupts the server and when I alt-F4 it closes a window in X but also switches to the fourth VT. But it looks like it happens even without this patch.

ah yes, you need to upgrade your server when using evdev master.  glad to hear the repeat issue is fixed though.

I too am having the problems described in this bug with xorg-x11-server 1.5.3 as shipped in Fedora 10.

I haven't tried that patch as yet, but I did poke the EVIOCSREP ioctl directly through a small Perl script. It certainly fixes the autorepeat issue for most keys, but it leaves the Left, Down and End keys with no autorepeat whatsoever.

Why would these three keys be handled differently to all the others?

(In reply to comment #8)
> I too am having the problems described in this bug with xorg-x11-server 1.5.3
> as shipped in Fedora 10.
> 
> I haven't tried that patch as yet, but I did poke the EVIOCSREP ioctl directly
> through a small Perl script. It certainly fixes the autorepeat issue for most
> keys, but it leaves the Left, Down and End keys with no autorepeat whatsoever.
> 
> Why would these three keys be handled differently to all the others?

At a guess, your desktop environment is clobbering them, because the keycodes for up/down/left/right as used by evdev are the same as a few special keys (e.g. print screen) in pc105.

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > I too am having the problems described in this bug with xorg-x11-server 1.5.3
> > as shipped in Fedora 10.
> > 
> > I haven't tried that patch as yet, but I did poke the EVIOCSREP ioctl directly
> > through a small Perl script. It certainly fixes the autorepeat issue for most
> > keys, but it leaves the Left, Down and End keys with no autorepeat whatsoever.
> > 
> > Why would these three keys be handled differently to all the others?
> 
> At a guess, your desktop environment is clobbering them, because the keycodes
> for up/down/left/right as used by evdev are the same as a few special keys
> (e.g. print screen) in pc105.
> 

Daniel, I can reproduce the "Left, Down and End keys" issue with my Ubuntu 8.10 whatever the desktop environment I use: GNOME, KDE or Xfce.

See my comment #4 on Launchpad bugreport #278078:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/278078

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/278078/comments/4

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> 
> For me the arrow keys start working like other keys after running "xset r 113;
> xset r 116; xset r 2".
> 

ricardo@kadath:~$ sudo xset r 113
ricardo@kadath:~$ sudo xset r 116
ricardo@kadath:~$ sudo xset r 2
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  102 (X_ChangeKeyboardControl)
  Value in failed request:  0x2
  Serial number of failed request:  7
  Current serial number in output stream:  9
ricardo@kadath:~$ 

Do you know why doesn't work with "r 2"?

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> 
> For me the arrow keys start working like other keys after running "xset r 113;
> xset r 116; xset r 2".
> 

+1! Works for me, too! Thank you very much. Now the Left key works as expected.

Could this fix go inside the X.Org source code in order to get these keys working without the need of the above three xset commands?

(In reply to comment #11)
> Do you know why doesn't work with "r 2"?
> 

Sorry, it was actually "xset r 22", but it seems that the backspace works fine here now even without it. If you have any other keys that don't autorepeat then just use "xev" to find out the keycode and then "xset r keycode". I have no idea though what causes this issue for those keys.

'xset r 113; xset r 115; xset r 116' fixes Left, End and Down respectively for me.

Daniel, you suggested it might be a desktop environment issue. I'm pretty sure this is not the case, since those three keys do not autorepeat if I simply start up X with 'startx /usr/bin/xterm'.

ricardo: because the minimum keycode is 8.

michael: hmm, okay, i'll look into it; got half an idea as to what it might be.  ta.

This was fixed in the server with the following commit:

commit bbf811514d3cdf84790bad5b852942a4e636902b
Author:     Sascha Hlusiak <saschahlusiak@arcor.de>
AuthorDate: Mon Dec 8 12:24:39 2008 +0100

    ddxCtrls.c: XkbDDXUsesSoftRepeat always returns 1 now

And you need the matching evdev commit:
commit ece72ce9e97adae23b1932dc1334f63669196d56
Author:     Sascha Hlusiak <saschahlusiak@arcor.de>
AuthorDate: Mon Dec 8 12:27:34 2008 +0100

    Filter all repeated keys from kernel, because we do softrepeat in server

(In reply to comment #16)
> This was fixed in the server with the following commit:
> 
> commit bbf811514d3cdf84790bad5b852942a4e636902b
> Author:     Sascha Hlusiak <saschahlusiak@arcor.de>
> AuthorDate: Mon Dec 8 12:24:39 2008 +0100
> 
>     ddxCtrls.c: XkbDDXUsesSoftRepeat always returns 1 now
> 
> And you need the matching evdev commit:
> commit ece72ce9e97adae23b1932dc1334f63669196d56
> Author:     Sascha Hlusiak <saschahlusiak@arcor.de>
> AuthorDate: Mon Dec 8 12:27:34 2008 +0100
> 
>     Filter all repeated keys from kernel, because we do softrepeat in server
> 

Can anybody test this fix? What about the Left, Right and End keys issue?

The fix does NOT resolve the Left, Down and End keys issue, as an user reported here:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/264196/comments/43

He said that he need to use xset in order to get repetition with these keys. It's a workaround, but it's NOT a full fix.

I propose to reopen the bug #17925, because there's obviously not the same problem.