Bug 489277

Summary:	Shortcuts for Keyboard Layouts malfunctioning
Product:	[Applications] systemsettings	Reporter:	Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa>
Component:	kcm_keyboard	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	butirsky, natalie_clarius, nate
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version:	5.27.11
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Shriramana Sharma 2024-06-27 04:02:59 UTC

Hello. I'm right now using KDE 5 on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS.

As I have to frequently handle multiple Indian languages/scripts along with English, I have configured 7 keyboard layouts with the following shortkeys:

Main:
Alt+1 Latin
Alt+2 Devanagari
Alt+3 Tamil

Spare:
Alt+5 Grantha
Alt+6 Kannada
Alt+7 Telugu
Alt+8 Malayalam

(I'm not really sure what is the difference between Main and Spare layouts though… but that may not be relevant here.)

Now what happens is that while the shortcut Alt+1 for Latin/English doesn't seem to change, the shortcuts for the later layouts seem to get shuffled at random. Right now I have the shortcuts set up as above, but 5 minutes ago it was shifting to Kannada when pressing Alt+3, now it's shifting to Grantha.

This keeps randomizing and I cannot predict a pattern except to say that half of the time it doesn't shift to the layout I have told it to shift to. As a result I have to manually mouse to the tray to select the layout by opening the layout switcher menu and clicking, which is a waste of time for me who keeps having to switch between languages/scripts.

I hope the problem can be identified and addressed.

My versions:

KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13

I have actually been having this problem for almost a year since Kubuntu 22.04 LTS which I was using till mid-2023, but I thought there was some problem with the incremental upgrades of Kubuntu and it would be solved by upgrading to latest release. However since the problem persists I am reporting it.

I have been using KDE ever since 2008 and I don't recollect having this problem before Kubuntu 22.04. Sometime in 2022/23 something might have changed leading to this problem? Sorry I can't be more specific than that.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2024-06-27 20:46:22 UTC

That is a lot of languages!

Comment 2 Shriramana Sharma 2024-07-07 15:39:09 UTC

Hello. I am not sure how the shortcut mechanism work. If I am using Devanagari, then the 2 key will not produce 2 but २. So will the system read it as Alt+2 or Alt+२?

Due to this concern I tried assigning F1, F2, F3 etc to the keyboard layouts as they don't generate visible characters that change per keyboard layout (and I remapped Help etc to something else). But that's not working properly either.

Now I tried mapping Alt + num keypad keys, but that's not working properly either.

I also confirm that the issue is not limited to the spare layouts as right now my Alt+Num+7 for Latin isn't working as configured but it has mysteriously shifted to Alt+Num+9. :-(