stubborn gnome-keyboard-properties

[jesuisbenjamin]

Hello there,


I have an issue with the keyboard layout settings.

During installation of 10.04 i installed USA international (dead keys). Then after the installation, realising i chose the wrong one, i added USA international (ALTGR dead keys) and removed the former and applied system-wide.

Yet when rebooting, the former keyboard shows up together with the latter.

I looked into gnome-keyboard-properties, the man page says not much but states:

The online documentation available through the program's Help menu.

But when i open gnome-keyboard-properties and press help, the window simply shuts down.

It's not handy at all.

I want to remove the former completely of my settings. Is there a file i can edit to do so?

(PS: i find there are too many gnome-related bugs in 10.04, it's disappointing )

Thanks!

[VH-BIL]

System > Preferences > Keyboard
Use the "Layouts" tab.

[jesuisbenjamin]

Thanks man,

but as i said in my previous post: it's what i did, but on reboot the former keyboard layout returns.

Also i have run gconf-edit and i checked the key /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/layouts where the layouts value has only us altgr-intl, the other value which returns at boot is not visible. This makes me think some other app is adding the former layout at startup. Is this possible? It sounds like a silly system.

(i reboot and try now and then edit the post again)

[reboot done]

Well as i expected: the same key now has the values [us altgr-intl,us intl] ! How upseting.

This is as geeky i have ever been in my life, so i definitely need help (and if this is a common issue for others too, it should be filed as a bug in my opinion)

Thanks!

[VH-BIL]

Im not sure but I will try and help. Have a look at the "/etc/default/console-setup" file and the XKBLAYOUT describes the keyboard layout.
here is mine:

# A configuration file for setupcon

# Change to "yes" and setupcon will explain what is being doing
VERBOSE_OUTPUT=no

# Setup these consoles.  Most people do not need to change this.
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"

# Put here your encoding.  Valid charmaps are: UTF-8 ARMSCII-8 CP1251
# CP1255 CP1256 GEORGIAN-ACADEMY GEORGIAN-PS IBM1133 ISIRI-3342
# ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-2 ISO-8859-3 ISO-8859-4 ISO-8859-5 ISO-8859-6
# ISO-8859-7 ISO-8859-8 ISO-8859-9 ISO-8859-10 ISO-8859-11 ISO-8859-13
# ISO-8859-14 ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-16 KOI8-R KOI8-U TIS-620 VISCII
CHARMAP="UTF-8"

# The codeset determines which symbols are supported by the font.
# Valid codesets are: Arabic Armenian CyrAsia CyrKoi CyrSlav Ethiopian
# Georgian Greek Hebrew Lao Lat15 Lat2 Lat38 Lat7 Thai Uni1 Uni2 Uni3
# Vietnamese.  Read README.fonts for explanation.
CODESET="Lat15"

# Valid font faces are: VGA (sizes 8, 14 and 16), Terminus (sizes
# 12x6, 14, 16, 20x10, 24x12, 28x14 and 32x16), TerminusBold (sizes
# 14, 16, 20x10, 24x12, 28x14 and 32x16), TerminusBoldVGA (sizes 14
# and 16), Fixed (sizes 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18), Goha (sizes 12, 14 and
# 16), GohaClassic (sizes 12, 14 and 16).
FONTFACE="VGA"
FONTSIZE="16"

# You can also directly specify nonstandard font and ACM to load:
# FONT=/usr/local/share/funnyfonts/sarge16.psf
# ACM=/usr/local/share/consoletrans/my_special_encoding.acm

# The following variables describe your keyboard and can have the same
# values as the XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions options
# in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""


# Do not update the following md5 sum if you change
# /etc/console-setup/boottime.kmap.gz and Debconf will not overwrite
# your custom keymap.  Do not update it even if you want to make
# Debconf overwrite it.  Instead simply specify the empty string as
# a md5 sum.

BOOTTIME_KMAP_MD5="aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

[jesuisbenjamin]

Well it provides only one keyboard details (the one i need)

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="intl"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch"

But then why do i have an alternative keyboard showing up?

[VH-BIL]

Just an idea, The keyboard application is in preferences and not administration so there must be a place that it stores the keyboard layout in your home directory as well. Just on a search I did them I found something you may want o check out "/home/user/.gconf/desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml" (change user to your username). If not there have a look somewhere in your "hidden" directories and file in your home directory.

Let me know how you go...

[jesuisbenjamin]

Hi thanks!

I didn't know about the preference~/home relation.

I found the file you mentioned and it contains:

<gconf>
    <entry name="options" mtime="1277376877" type="list" ltype="string">
        <li type="string">
            <stringvalue>lv3    lv3:ralt_switch</stringvalue>
        </li>
        <li type="string">
            <stringvalue>grp    grp:alts_toggle</stringvalue>
        </li>
    </entry>
    <entry name="layouts" mtime="1277411184" type="list" ltype="string">
        <li type="string">
            <stringvalue>us    altgr-intl</stringvalue>
        </li>
        <li type="string">
            <stringvalue>us    intl</stringvalue>
        </li>
    </entry>
</gconf> 

Now i am going to try the following part:

<li type="string">
            <stringvalue>us    intl</stringvalue>
        </li> 

Let's hope it works, i'll do that, reboot and reply.

[jesuisbenjamin]

Haha!
It didn't work!
The code is back to what it was before

What's the point of code if it re-write itself!

[VH-BIL]

Mine says

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
	<entry name="model" mtime="1274248721" type="string">
		<stringvalue>pc105</stringvalue>
	</entry>
	<entry name="layouts" mtime="1257066097" type="list" ltype="string">
		<li type="string">
			<stringvalue>us</stringvalue>
		</li>
	</entry>
</gconf>

Try changing it to that (back up yours first).

[jesuisbenjamin]

Hi there,

By doing this, after booting up, i have US and the famous US intl is added up.
So regardless of any change in the gconf.xml the US intl adds up to the list of layouts, whatever may be in the list.

NB: when i change the xml file and save, then the window-decorator (i guess the whole of Compiz) crashes. I wonder how that is related.

Thanks for your help so far.

PS: i reckon there is another file from which the keyboard preference chosen during install is copied and added to the "live" keyboard-preference. The question is to find out which one.