Xfce Forum

jbotz

Member

Registered: 2012-06-12

Posts: 2

[Solved] Keyboard weirdness

Hi, I'm using xfce 4.8 as shipped with Fedora 17.  I'm new to xfce (I'm a Gnome 3 refugee...
I just upgraded from Fedora 14/Gnome 2 and after trying Gnome 3 for a couple of weeks
gave up.)

Anyway, some time after starting an Xfce session the keyboard on my laptop gets "laggy"...
I have to hold down keys for about a half second for keypresses to register.  However, if
I connect an external USB keyboard, that works fine.  Also, if I switch to a virtual console
(i.e. using ctrl-alt-F2) on that VC the laptop's built-in keyboard acts normally, but switching
back to the XFCE session it's laggy again.

I'm not seeing anything like this in other windowing environments, so it doesn't seem to
have anything to do with hardware or other non-xfce issues.

Any ideas?

:j

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [Solved] Keyboard weirdness

Did you happen to hold the Shift key for, say, 10 seconds?
Then it activates the sticky keys (needs to hold the Shift key again for it to de-activate) and maybe it gives that effect?

jbotz

Member

Registered: 2012-06-12

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] Keyboard weirdness

Yeah, that was it.   I had been doing constrained selections in the gimp, that's
how I held down the shift key for an extended time.

How do I turn this "feature" off permanentely?  "Use slow keys"
in accessibility is NOT selected.

IMHO all these kinds of accessibility features should be disabled in a way that
they can't be accidentally turned on unless explicitly enabled in a control panel.
Less than one in 10,000 people actually need them, and those who do still need
to be aware of how to turn them on/off etc., so there is really no excuse for
someone like me to be tripped up by this.

:j

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: [Solved] Keyboard weirdness

I don't know how to turn it off... maybe you should use the OMG-Ponies! theme for the notifications ;-)

michael9422

Member

Registered: 2012-07-13

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] Keyboard weirdness

Like probably a lot of other people, I was also victimized by this time-wasting gotcha. This "feature", and similar secret keystroke combinations should be
called "desktop usability landmines", and buried deep under five or ten submenus instead.