Strange keyboard problem
Since about a week, I started to notice that I had been making a lot of typos in some commands I use frequently. For example, I became unable to type correctly
cd /usr/src/linux
which always resulted in
cd /usr/src:linux
(incidentally, when typing the above strings, I had to fix the first one and the second one came naturally buggy)
On a French keyboard (AZERTY layout), / is obtained by pressing
simultaneously shift and :. I first thought that my laptop keyboard
was misfunctioning. But it happened on my home computer as well. I then
thought I had become unable to properly release the C key before
pressing the shift one, but no, I think I found a real bug somewhere:
this problem occurs only when a key amongst the lowest left part of the
keyboard (near to the shift, namely one of the WXCV letters on my
keyboard) is rapidly followed by a shift.
Let’s make a test: while running a X11 server, press the C key, let it
pressed so that you turn the auto-repeat mode on, then press shift
(without releasing the key). You should, at least under Linux with Xorg,
see something like:
ccccccccccccccCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC...
But what I get is:
cccccccccccccccccccccc...
The shift key is ignored. Note that it works fine with the right
shift key though.
For a fast touch typist (as I otherwise luckily am), this is rather
unfortunate; the combination of one of those wxcv letters followed by
a slash happens to me at least fifty times a day, often much more than
that. Since I cannot reproduce that on the Linux console, I will for the
moment put the blame on my X server.