Letters in tamil are typed by entering the consonant-a letter, then a combining character to replace the 'a' with the appropriate vowel. For example, the sound 'ku' would be represented by ka - க and the '-u' combining character ு to give கு. The vowel is suppressed by using the ் combining character to give 'k' (or 'ik') - க். When the backspace key is pressed, it deletes the consonant and the combining vowel. E.g. the entire letter கு would be removed. This is annoying, but in a way, logical. However, if a vowel with suppressed consonant is typed, followed by another consonant (perhaps with combining vowel), e.g. ண்டை, both the second consonant and the first are deleted when backspace is pressed. This is very unintuitive. Reproducible: Always
Which application or text input field is this? Does it happen in Kate/KWrite, Calligra, or KMail? Does it also affect simple text line input fields, such as Alt+F2 KRunner?
It appears to be in Calligra Words, and in the Calligra multiline text shape (and so, presumably, in all other Calligra applications). Elsewhere, it acts as expected, removing only the last entered keyboard character.
Can you tell me if you have specifially tested this in kate or kwrite, or in kmail composer. Also I fear this is something that will go unfixed for a long time - unless you fix it yourself - which will be hard if yu are not a programmer
It works as expected in both kwrite and kmail composer. If you can give an indication of where the backspace logic is in the calligra code, I can have a go at fixing it myself.
plugins/testshape/TextTool.cpp keyEvent() to be more specific, but it's rather convoluted code even then
I can confirm that this happens in kate as well and I was just talking to some on IRC about in #kate this year. I had forgotten to file a bug, sorry. This seems to affect all application that use same backend for handling input. Can this issue be considered again.
Hmmmm kate and calligra doesn't use the same backend - except Qt and possibly some input helper app you have installed. This indicates to me that the bug well not be be fixed here - but again as Cristoph said it's very low on our list of bugs. But please gather more info like what other apps have the issue, and if some setting somewhere can prevent it
I am using the Tamil layout from ibus/ibus-m17n and set it at boot time to switch between US and IN(TAM) using CAPS. I wanted to set it up globally to make sure it works in other WMs as well and it works inside plasma as well. For example the intended behaviour described in the first comment works in Firefox and for a pure Qt example, clementine search has this behaviour. I am testing clementine's Qt5 experimental branch. Please do suggest any other test I could perform to narrow it down.
The hint about clementine is relevant as it is probably then a problem in both Kate and Calligra. Not the same directly but we seem to both have made a similar mistake The next thing is finding a tamill speaking developer and have them get in contact with us. Without a tamill keyboard and knowledge etc it's rather hard for us to know if we are doing the right thing - let alone that we don't have time to work on it
QtCreator doesn't exhibit this bug, neither does VLC. KWrite (17.04) does.
In fact, there's an easy way for anyone to reproduce this without knowing Tamil. The bug is in how Unicode combining characters are handled. Here is a Unicode combining acute accent: ́ Here is an 'e' followed by the above character: é Type an e in your chosen application, then copy and paste the acute accent from above. If you then press backspace, only the accent should be deleted. If the bug is present, the e will also be deleted.
I can confirm the behaviour mentioned by beojan. I see that both kwrite and kate use ktexteditor but I can't figure out how delete is handled. Am I correct in assuming that ktexteditor handles it or is done by lower level library?
This ticket is for the Calligra office suite. If KTextEditor based applications, such as Kate, KWrite, Kile, or KDevelop show the same error, please file a separate ticket for Kate.
This seems to fixed in Kate but not in Calligra.I don't know what changed though.
I now get the expected behaviour in Calligra Words. Please reopen if you can still reproduce this. SOFTWARE INFORMATION: IM: ibus 1.5.25 / keyman 13.0.103 Calligra version: 3.2.1 Operating System: Arch Linux KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0 Qt Version: 5.15.3 Graphics Platform: X11