Bug 78180

Hi there.

There appears to be a bug with how X.org handles the "repeat" setting in xkb definitions.

Bought a chromebook and installed a non-ChromeOS Linux distribution on it.

Chromebooks come with a limited set of keys for ease of use and then make missing keys available through modifiers, e.g.:

Up = <UP>
Prior = Alt+<UP>
Home = Ctrl+Alt+<UP>
(see https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1047364?hl=en)

I'm trying to get these keyboard shortcuts to work within my Linux system and fiddle with a custom, system-wide xkb setting right now.

(The ChromeOS guys used to use xkb for this purpose, as well. But some time ago, they have moved their re-mapping of these keys from xkb into the user space applications, instead: <http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/overlays/chromiumos-overlay.git;a=commitdiff;h=9b26b7aba4402bf97cee5cae8333175748160f62>)

My current work-in-progress solution with xkb looks somewhat like this:

In types/pc, add:

    type "CTRL+ALT_ACTUALLY" {
        modifiers = Control+Alt+Shift;
        map[None] = Level1;
        map[Shift] = Level2;
        map[Alt] = Level3;
        map[Shift+Alt] = Level4;
        map[Control+Alt] = Level5;
        preserve[Shift] = Shift;
        preserve[Shift+Alt] = Shift;
        level_name[Level1] = "Base";
        level_name[Level2] = "Shift";
        level_name[Level3] = "Alt Base";
        level_name[Level4] = "Shift Alt";
        level_name[Level5] = "Ctrl+Alt";
    };
    // see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78139

In symbols/inet, add:

  // Chromebook keyboards
  partial alphanumeric_keys
  xkb_symbols "chromebook" {

   key <UP> {
      type="CTRL+ALT_ACTUALLY",
      repeat=yes,
      symbols[Group1] = [ Up, Up, Prior, Prior, Home ]
      actions[Group1] = [
        NoAction(),
        NoAction(),
        RedirectKey(key=<PGUP>, clearmods=Alt),
        RedirectKey(key=<PGUP>, clearmods=Alt),
        RedirectKey(key=<HOME>, clearmods=Control+Alt)
      ]
    };
    // similar for other keys
  };

This works, but autorepeat doesn't work for this custom <UP> definition.

I found a patch from the ChromeOS guys that seems to address this problem <http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/overlays/chromiumos-overlay.git;a=blob;f=x11-base/xorg-server/files/1.7.6-fix-xkb-autorepeat.patch;h=8bad5abc5ad3958f6d73c55c67d3883ac775db18;hb=c3ce41719abc82a257e1fef1c499ea2e7c6b3c32>

...I commented out the two lines of code mentioned in the patch for the current version on my system, but that didn't fix the issue or I'm using it wrong.

So I kindly ask you to have a look at that patch or see if there is a better way to fix this issue.

I'm running x.org 7.7 as pre-packaged by Ubuntu for their 14.04 release (7.7+1ubuntu8).

Thanks!