Xpra: Ticket #166: Switching keyboard layouts does not work as expected

Multiple keyboard layouts are setup on both xpra server host and on xpra client host. On both hosts the key sequence to switch between keyboard layouts is LSHIFT + RSHIFT. Pressing this key combination on xpra client switches the keyboard layout on the client, but the input characters sent to the attached application are still those of the previous keyboard layout.



Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:49:20 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed

Does it help if you disconnect and re-connect?

How are those keyboards configured? What software does the switching? etc.. Need more info.


Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:27:03 GMT - angel.tsankov:

No, re-connecting does not help.

I do not understand what is meant by "How are those keyboards configures?".

The software that does the switching is configured via GNOME's Keyboard Preferences (Main Menu -> System -> Preferences -> Keyboard).

I tried un-checking "Separate layout for each window". Upon next pressing of LSHIFT+RSHIFT, everything was fine. Then I pressed LSHIFT+RSHIFT again and the sane problem appeared again: the keyboard layout indicator in the notification area shows that another layout is in effect, but the input characters are still from the previous layout.


Wed, 10 Oct 2012 05:56:02 GMT - Antoine Martin: milestone changed

Will probably require Xkb support, see #86


Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:48:18 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed

Hmmm, what we would need to do is to trigger the layout change server-side at the same time as the client does it. The problem is that I don't think that the switch key combination is exposed to us, so the server has no way of knowing about it.

Please post some of the debug information from wiki/Keyboard, maybe there is something in there we can use (setxkbmap -print ?). I suspect that this is a gnome/input-methods thing though, in which case we would need to find a way to listen for such switching events. (if at all possible).


Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:48:28 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner changed


Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:34:25 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed; resolution set

Not heard back, closing. See also #86


Tue, 19 Aug 2014 04:25:48 GMT - Antoine Martin:

Note: v0.14 includes a keyboard layout switcher from the tray, this may help you override the current setting. There is also a new input-methods switch, which you may want to try.


Mon, 20 Feb 2017 12:14:30 GMT - Antoine Martin:

See also #1380.


Sat, 23 Jan 2021 04:47:20 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/166