311665 - Keyboard Shortcuts displayed incorrectly when using a non-qwerty keyboard layout

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[Matthias Berndt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915

Hi,
i recently switched to the NEO Keyboard layout, therefore all the keys on the
keyboard are in completely different places (see here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:NEO-Layout.png).

On a qwerty layout, i'd have to press Ctrl+T to open a new tab. I've tried to do
this with the NEO layout, but it did't work. Instead, i have to press Ctrl+W,
because the W is in the place where the T would normally be. However, in the
File Menu it still says Ctrl+T.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[u63580]

This osunds to me like the keyboard is still reporting sending a "T" (for
example) when you press what is marked as W.  How do you make the keyboard
layout work under Windows - via control panel, or by some other method?

Comment 2

[Matthias Berndt]

Well, first i installed the MSI package from here:
http://pebbles.schattenlauf.de/layout.php
Then i set the NEO layout as the default in the control panel. Since then, every
application uses the NEO layout, including Mozilla when typing URIs and filling
forms, but *not* when using keyboard shortcuts.

I guess that for some reason the Keyboard Shortcuts are based on keycodes rather
than on letters, since a pressed key always returns the same keycode, no matter
what keyboard layout is being used.

Comment 3

[Andrew Schultz]

==> keyboard nav

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Keyboard shortcuts use keycodes because Alt-T and Shift-T and so forth don't make sense with charcodes -- they don't send the charcode for "t", generally speaking.

Comment 5

[Matthias Berndt]

Well, there must be some sort of algorithm to determine what it says in the Menu (e. g. Ctrl+T), and i think that this algorith should take into account what keyboard layout the user is currently using. You might say that this isn't important, because almost everyone uses a qwerty layout, but that isn't true. The german standard layout is slightly different (the Z and Y are exchanged), and also the french layout is a bit different (see here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Azerty.png)

Comment 6

[Dmitrii 'Mamut' Dimandt]

This is also related to bug 69230. See the entire discussion there on why this is so

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is there a dupe?   reporter has "switched back to using a normal qwertz layout".

Comment 8

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

I have an AZERTY layout, where Ctrl+Q (for instance, on the middle row) is Ctrl+Q, not Ctrl+A, and my Ctrl+W (at bottom left) means Ctrl+W, not Ctrl+Z. But I wouldn't know about more exotic layouts like Dvorak or NEO.

Is this a Mozilla bug or a bug in the NEO keyboard driver? Does the NEO keyboard driver send 0x01 for Ctrl+A, 0x02 for Ctrl+B, etc., the way many others do?

Comment 9

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 10

[Zac]

For those suffering from this problem:

I was using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to create my layouts and was suffering from this problem. I after searching around I discovered Keyboard Layout Manager http://www.klm32.com/KbdEdit.html . 

In the link above youll find a section called "Resolve VKs" which says:

This button does automatic Virtual Key assignment. This feature is useful when moving a key to a new location. For instance, if you move the character 'c' to the new key, you expect that when you press Ctrl + 'new_key' the computer performs the 'copy' function. If you do not press this button after moving the character, the computer performs the 'copy' function only in response to the Ctrl + 'old_key' combination being pressed.
This feature just 'follows' new key assignments and tries to put corresponding Ctrl + key combinations in the right place.

So create a keyboard layout and then press Resolve VKs and it should work, it did for me anyway. There is a free version that offers mapping of standard EN characters -- and hopefully that will be all you need. Otherwise it costs money.

Note: To save your keyboard layouts so that you dont have to use Keyboard Layout Manger"s every time that you want to install a layout you can find the dlls by searching for them (the name is given in the edit mode) and saving the registry key located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Keyboard Layouts\

The keys youve created should be at the bottom.