AltGr key still dead in firefox and opera in 1.1

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: AltGr key still dead in firefox and opera in 1.1
started by: stamfar

Posted by stamfar on May 09 2005,14:14

im posting this bug (again) in hope that somebody will care, and that it eventually will be fixed.

with norwegian (and several other, like all scandinavian, italian, german,ect.) keymaps the Alt Gr key is not working in Firefox or Opera,
effectively disabling the @Ł${[]}´€~ symbols, @ being The showstopper.

i would have looked into this myself if i had the knowledge to fix it,
which i don't.

Thanks again
mats

Posted by KTW on May 09 2005,19:57

Same problem in Danish.
Seems like Firefox has the Alt-Gr keys switched with the Shift keys.
If i press Alt-Gr+2 nothing happens, but if I use Shift+2 I get @ symbol.

Posted by stamfar on May 09 2005,21:56

no, its not working with the shift key...
thats the US layout (u need to restart x to load keymaps)
quit x (ctrl+alt+backspace) and type loadkeys dk or dk-latin1
and then startx to restart x
and you will find that its not working

Posted by jls legalize on May 11 2005,11:31

the dsl team is being racist:angry:

Posted by meo on May 11 2005,23:49

Hi Y'all!

I have the same problem with my swedish keyboard. I workaround this using openoffice. I write, let's say, an e-mail sddress and then copy and paste it from openoffice.

Have fun but stay out of trouble,
meo

Posted by Knusper on July 06 2005,00:21

ok, this workaround seems a little bit odd...

why is the altgr key not working in firefox.? is there a solution to this problem? for german keyboards the alt gr ( or as americans say, the right alt key) is of high importance because the @ symbol is made with it...

using the computer mainly for email, dsl becomes unuseable for a german user if he want's to use firefox and webmail applications, like me, i even could not register on any board or something, hopefully i have a second computer with suse.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on July 06 2005,02:20

As we have stated before, this is not an error with DSL.

This is a bug in the version of Firefox that DSL uses by default. (Firefox 0.9.1)

The main reason that we have not updated to a more recent version of Firefox is that it is a LOT of work to rewrite an application as large as Firefox in GTK 1.2, which is what was done with 0.9.1.

If someone gets ambitious and rewrites a newer version of Firefox in GTK 1.2, I'm relatively sure that if it proves stable, and is relatively the same size as the current version, that it would be included in a future release as a replacement to the existing version.

Until someone does this, either someone in the DevTeam (not me, I suck at coding things that big) or another user does this, Firefox 0.9.1 is likely here to stay, because it works, is fast, uses gtk 1.2, and is just relatively cozy to browse the web with.

At this point, if you need a newer version of Firefox, there are several newer, including the latest version, I think, available as MyDSL packages.

-J.P.

Posted by jls legalize on July 06 2005,07:39

make the following .Xmodmap file:

remove mod4 = Mode_switch
add mod5 = Mode_switch

and then run xmodmap .Xmodmap

Posted by Nanobot on July 06 2005,08:30

thx for your input jls

the result on my box was unfortunately this:

xmodmap: .Xmodmap:0: bad keysym in remove modifier list 'Mode_switch', no corresponding keycodes
xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.

however Hatis post < here > sort of does the trick altering the shift+2 to @ but sacrificing quotation marks in the process.

# delete mod4 which is for AltGr
xmodmap -e "clear mod4"
# add AltGr to shift keys
xmodmap -e "add shift = Mode_switch"
# change shift+2 to type '@'
xmodmap -e 'keysym 2 = 2 at at'

Posted by Knusper on July 06 2005,12:21

Quote (SaidinUnleashed @ July 05 2005,22:20)

At this point, if you need a newer version of Firefox, there are several newer, including the latest version, I think, available as MyDSL packages.

Is it possible to download the newest Version of Firefox from the Firefox website and then run the installer?

I will try jls legalize version this evening, cause unfortuneatly my Alt Gr Key still does not work with XFree86 installed... With XVesa it works.. But this is another topic I think, and if I find no solution I will ask in the forum....

Posted by friedgold on July 06 2005,16:12

Quote (SaidinUnleashed @ July 05 2005,22:20)

I was under the impression that GTK1.2 support is present in the mozilla source and just needed to be enabled at compile time by running configure with --enable-default-toolkit=gtk instead of --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2. Or has this been dropped for more recent firefox releases?

Posted by cbagger01 on July 06 2005,16:15

The difficult part is not recompiling with GTK1.2 instead of GTK2.x

The difficult part is recompiling a custom patched source that has been stripped of some functionality in order to get an executable that can be squeezed into a 50MB livecd.

At least that is my impression. I'm not the guy that did the customizing, so I don't know for sure.

Posted by Knusper on July 06 2005,18:53

so, i installed the newest (1.0.4) firefox version from the firefox hp, even the german versuion.. the alt-gr key still does not work... it seems that this is not a problem of the older firefox version... with the XVesa driver the alt-gr + q string works at other appllications (e.g dillo) well...

edit: needles to say, that it also did not work with the firefox1.0PR.dsl.info extension....

another edit: okay, jls legalize's trick does it... under Xvesa...
but i made it like that:

Code Sample

dsl@box:~$ xmodmap -e "remove mod4 = Mode_switch"
dsl@box:~$ xmodmap -e "add mod5 = Mode_switch"

Posted by stamfar on July 16 2005,12:52

Quote (friedgold @ July 06 2005,12:12)

[quote=SaidinUnleashed,July 05 2005,22:20]As we have stated before, this is not an error with DSL.

This is a bug in the version of Firefox that DSL uses by default. (Firefox 0.9.1)

The main reason that we have not updated to a more recent version of Firefox is that it is a LOT of work to rewrite an application as large as Firefox in GTK 1.2, which is what was done with 0.9.1.

If someone gets ambitious and rewrites a newer version of Firefox in GTK 1.2, I'm relatively sure that if it proves stable, and is relatively the same size as the current version, that it would be included in a future release as a replacement to the existing version.

Until someone does this, either someone in the DevTeam (not me, I suck at coding things that big) or another user does this, Firefox 0.9.1 is likely here to stay, because it works, is fast, uses gtk 1.2, and is just relatively cozy to browse the web with.

At this point, if you need a newer version of Firefox, there are several newer, including the latest version, I think, available as MyDSL packages.

as I have stated before the bug does not only appear in Firefox 0.9.1, but in all decent browsers from the myDSL repos;
namely all versions of Firefox, Mozilla and Opera.

Posted by stamfar on July 16 2005,13:53

Quote (Knusper @ July 06 2005,14:53)

another edit: okay, jls legalize's trick does it... under Xvesa...
but i made it like that:

Code Sample

dsl@box:~$ xmodmap -e "remove mod4 = Mode_switch"
dsl@box:~$ xmodmap -e "add mod5 = Mode_switch"

WoW!

That did the trick ! *Finaly* i can start using DSL again,
my use has mainly been settig up old machines we get for free ,mostly P1, with 128 of ram or (more than often) below.
Making them into internet/surf machines where people who dosen't have an internet connection/computer can surf/check email for free.

and nothing touches DamnSmalls speed when it comes to old hardware, and its a joy to setup and use.

hopefuly this will fix will be baked into the 1.4 release

th@nks everybody
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@