AltGr behaviour

users
#1

Hi!

I find the AltGr behaviour a bit strange in LibreOffice and I wonder why
and if anything can be done about it.

My environment is maybe a bit odd, but it works in most applications,
LibreOffice one of the few where it doesn't work.

The thing is that I use my own keyboard layout, and I have done that for
maybe ten years or so. The thing about my layout is that I can type
characters with keys like Enter, arrow keys, tab, Home, End etc, if
combined with the AltGr key. For instance, AltGr+Enter types the ↵
character (great for writing user manuals…), Shift+AltGr+Enter ⇨ ¶

This works almost everywhere, but as I said, not in LibreOffice (nor Apache
OpenOffice, I think).

If I hit AltGr and an arrow key, LibreOffice ignores AltGr and just moves
the cursor. I expected, depending on which arrow key, one of ←↑↓→. With
Shift, I expect one of ⬄↹↔⇨, but instead I get the Shift+arrow behaviour,
so once again AltGr is ignored.

If I hit AltGr and one of the number keys when Num Lock is activated,
LibreOffice behaves as if Num Lock is NOT activated, for instance AltGr+7 ⇨
Home. If I do this in most other applications, I get a subscript seven (₇).
And also, when hitting Shift and a number key when Num Lock is activated, I
don't get the expected behaviour. For instance Shift+7 highlights
everything to the left of the cursor instead of typing ⅞.

Here's my numkeys layout:
NumLock / * -
7 8 9 +
4 5 6
1 2 3 Enter
0 ,

Shift:
NumLock ÷ · ⅚
⅞ ⅓ ⅔ ⅙
½ ⅝ ¾
⅛ ¼ ⅜ Enter
± .

AltGr:
NumLock ⅕ ⅗ ₋
₇ ₈ ₉ ₊
₄ ₅ ₆
₁ ₂ ₃ ↵
₀ ⩽

Shift+AltGr:
NumLock ⅖ ⅘ ⁻
⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ⁺
⁴ ⁵ ⁶
¹ ² ³ ¶
⁰ ⩾

My operating system is Manjaro stable (XFCE), but I saw the same behaviour
with Ubuntu.
Is there a special reason why LibreOffice don't just obey to the operating
system's settings? Can I do something about it? Is it worth writing a bug
report?

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#2

Do you think that could be because LO treats keycode 100 and keycode  56 (the 2 Alt keys on my board) as the same key.
I notice in Tools>Customise>Keyboard no differentiation is offered. I noticed things not right with the alt key (for me) a while back and mapped "Paste unformatted text" to Ctl+k to skip the issue.
steve

#3

I don't know what version of LO or OS you are using but that certainly
isn't how my system works, nor is mine the same as the OP. LO appears to
work the same way as my terminal or gedit does. The left Alt and right
AltGr have very different behaviours. Only AltGr acts as a composition
key but it doesn't composite with arrow keys or the return key like the
OPs system. I don't know the reasons for any of these variations.

I have openSuse 42.3 with an LXDE desktop and LO 5.3.5.2 from the
openSuse standard repositories.

Cheers, Dave

#4

> > My operating system is Manjaro stable (XFCE), but I saw the same
> > behaviour with Ubuntu.
> > Is there a special reason why LibreOffice don't just obey to the
> > operating system's settings? Can I do something about it? Is it
> > worth writing a bug report?
> >
> > Kind regards
> >
> > Johnny Rosenberg
> >
> Do you think that could be because LO treats keycode 100 and keycode
> 56 (the 2 Alt keys on my board) as the same key.

I don't know what version of LO or OS you are using but that certainly
isn't how my system works, nor is mine the same as the OP. LO appears to
work the same way as my terminal or gedit does. The left Alt and right
AltGr have very different behaviours. Only AltGr acts as a composition
key but it doesn't composite with arrow keys or the return key like the
OPs system. I don't know the reasons for any of these variations.

Well, when using AltGr with other keys, there are no problems, only when
combining with those key you usually don't type with. My keyboard layout is
completely my own, so I'm the only one who have it (although I have seen
others doing similar things). Still, I think it should work, because it
works almost everywhere else, and if it shouldn't work I want to know why.

The reason I made my own layout in the first place was that when I switched
to Ubuntu back in 2007 (previously using Windows XP), I found that I had a
lot more characters on the (Swedish) standard layout than I had in Windows.
I noticed, for instance, those arrow characters, placed at AltGr+y,
AltGr+u, Shift+AltGr+u and AltGr+i, and I thought why not have them
available on the arrow keys instead? Easier to remember and AltGr isn't
otherwise used with the arrow keys for anything else, so it should work. So
I did, and my next thought was "why have numbers at two different places?"
So I removed them from the top row and moved the Shift+TopRowNumber
characters down, being able to type !"#@ and more without using the Shift
key. Then I added a real quotation character at Shift+" (⇨”) and a lot of
other characters that I thought I might need. I also included some Greek
characters, like π, Ω and Σ, usable in maths and electronics. Fractions (⅛
¼ ⅜ ½ ⅝ ¾ ⅞ ⅓ ⅔ ⅙ ⅚ ⅕ ⅖ ⅗ ⅘), as mentioned before, were added to the
Numkeys (when NumLock=On) and so was superscript and subscript numbers (¹ ²
³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ⁰ ₁ ₂ ₃ ₄ ₅ ₆ ₇ ₈ ₉ ₀). There were still a lot of keys with
only two characters, so I added some more (like ℗ ℃ ℉ ☏ :phone: :frowning: :relaxed: ✓ :heavy_check_mark: ◂ :arrow_backward: ▴ ▲ ○
:eject_button: ▸ :arrow_forward: ▾ ▼ ☐ ☒ and more). Basically I wanted every key to use all the four
possible combinations of Shift and AltGr. I even have a no-break space at
AltGr+Space…

Anyway, I have used that layout for years now, I changed a character or two
now and then over the years but most are the same as my first version, and
it worked perfectly in most situations.
So, there's the background, in case anyone wonders.

By the way, I'm using ”LibreOffice 5.3.7.2.0+” from the Manjaro stable
repository, but I have had the same ”problem” with all versions I think, so
this isn't new in any way.

Thanks for replying!

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg

#5

I tried Manjaro and liked it — except for the way the keyboard
functioned, especially in LO. I normally use English (US,
international with dead keys). With Manjaro, I had to change my
Compose key to the right Ctrl (damned inconvenient, losing shortcuts
like Ctrl+Home which are imprinted in my brain) and still had some
other issues (don't remember exactly what at this point). After
several weeks, I gave up and switched distros.