Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice

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Please check that the option "disable if key pressed twice" is not enabled, If that does not solve your problem please let us know

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No, checking that option does nothing, since it affects the case where two _different_ keys are pressed simulataneously. What Im experiencing is that the same modifier key get deaktivated if pressed twice. An example: if I press Shift once and type several letters the first letter is uppercase: Aaaaa. If I press Shift twice and type several letters; what should happen is _all_ letters be uppercase. What happens instead is this: aaaaa. No letter is uppercase, because Shift got "unpressed"/"unstuck". Same behavior with all modifier keys (Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Win, Alt Gr).

And I would strongly argue that this _is_ a bug and a (big) problem, because all previous versions of Ubuntu and others OSs (inluding Windows) had/have the correct behavior of sticky keys: press once → stick for next keystroke, press twice → stick "forever", press third time → unstick.

I asked a friend to test this on his installation of 12.04, and he had the same, incorrect behavior.

I hope I was able to clarify my point. Please do not mark this report as invalid, because this bug renders 12.04 useless for someone who needs sticky keys (including me). Im sorry for the poor wording in the title.

It is definitely a bug. Today I've upgraded my Ubuntu to 12.04 and sticky keys stopped working as expected - pressed twice unlocks key instead of locking it until third click. Without sticky keys working properly using Ubuntu for people with disabilities became difficult.

Thank you, Filip, for confirming. Unfortunatly, I do not know where to look (in which package), otherwise I could look into the responsible code and maybe come up with a patch myself. Can anyone give me a hint?

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

cerasus-k: check the xkbset package. If not there, it may be a bug in Wayland's X client.

I upgraded today and was very disappointed.

Did sticky keys work properly in 11.10?

yes, in all previous versions they worked properly

Argh! We'll have to see what's changed, then. Is there a site to search through all of 12.04's source code?

12.04 has a libx11-doc package that contains documentation for libx11-dev, which controls the accessibility features. I think this is the relevant section:

http://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/XKB/xkblib.html#Keyboard_State

xorg/xserver git repo:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/

Fails in Kubuntu as well. :/

and in Xubuntu

The bug is definitely in Xorg/xserver--it exists across multiple distributions, including Fedora. OpenSUSE 12.1 is the newest I can find that works--if only because uses 7.6; Ubuntu 12.04 uses 7.7.

The change HAD to occur between tags 1.10.4 and 1.11.3 in the git repo, but I can't pin it down.

This is happening in Wheezy too, it's drive me crazy... any luck yet? is it an xkbset problem?

Same bug in Ubuntu 12.10 as well

Anyone had any luck yet? I, too, tried browsing through X's source code, but still no progress. Any hints?

I have not seen any movement on this bug.

On Monday, December 2, 2013 4:26 AM, "<email address hidden>" <email address hidden> wrote:

Anyone had any luck yet? I, too, tried browsing through X's source code,
but still no progress. Any hints?

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duplicate bug report (993915).
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998877

Title:
  Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice

Status in X.Org X server:
  New
Status in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit

  When pressing a modifier once  (ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, etc) it sticks for
  the next keypress. This is normal behavior. However, if pressed twice
  it should stick untill pressed a third time (this allows to simulate
  holding  it down). Instead, when pressed twice the modifier gets
  "released".

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The bug still exists in Debian Jessie, too. I plan on dedicating some time to fixing this bug later this week.

Steven: Maybe we could join "resources"?

cerasus: tell me what you have in mind.

I have sent requests to both the xorg and wayland development mailing lists asking for help, but nobody has offered to point me in the right direction.

I used distrowatch to narrow the bug's source down to between versions 1.10.6 and 1.11.1. If I knew how to build X and a simple X cient (e.g., Xterm), I might be able to use git bisect to find the exact commit that introduced the bug. Once I locate the source of the error, it should be fairly simple to fix it.

Debian's xterm git repo:

git://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-xorg/app/xterm

Debian's xorg git repo:

git://git.debian.org/git/pkg-xorg/debian/xorg

Who knows? Maybe it'll be easier now that I have both git repos? :)

I have some commitments I need to complete before Sunday (hopefully before Saturday), but if I have time, I'll see what I can figure out. (It's possible that all we need to do is build and install Squeeze's version of xorg, 1:7.6+8~bpo60+1, in Wheezy... but that seems way too easy.)

Today I live-booted an image of Ubuntu 14.04 and the sticky keys worked correctly. Going to install it today/next days and try it out. Can anyone confirm?

Confirmed in VirtualBox.

Careful with VirtualBox because the guest OS seems to "use" the sticky keys
of the host OS, as the key signals seem to be handled by the host OS first.
But with live-boot the sticky key work on previous versions, and they
suddendly do with 14.04, so I'm hopeful

2014-04-02 22:33 GMT+02:00 Steven Edwards <email address hidden>:

> Confirmed in VirtualBox.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998877
>
> Title:
> Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice
>
> Status in X.Org X server:
> New
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit
>
> When pressing a modifier once (ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, etc) it sticks for
> the next keypress. This is normal behavior. However, if pressed twice
> it should stick untill pressed a third time (this allows to simulate
> holding it down). Instead, when pressed twice the modifier gets
> "released".
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/998877/+subscriptions
>

Did not. I meant the sticky keys did not work with previous versions, with
live-boot

2014-04-02 22:59 GMT+02:00 Evgeni Bykarskij <email address hidden>:

> Careful with VirtualBox because the guest OS seems to "use" the sticky
> keys of the host OS, as the key signals seem to be handled by the host OS
> first. But with live-boot the sticky key work on previous versions, and
> they suddendly do with 14.04, so I'm hopeful
>
>
> 2014-04-02 22:33 GMT+02:00 Steven Edwards <email address hidden>:
>
> Confirmed in VirtualBox.
>>
>> --
>> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
>> report.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998877
>>
>> Title:
>> Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice
>>
>> Status in X.Org X server:
>> New
>> Status in Ubuntu:
>> Confirmed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit
>>
>> When pressing a modifier once (ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, etc) it sticks for
>> the next keypress. This is normal behavior. However, if pressed twice
>> it should stick untill pressed a third time (this allows to simulate
>> holding it down). Instead, when pressed twice the modifier gets
>> "released".
>>
>> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/998877/+subscriptions
>>
>
>

StickyKeys failed for me when using Ubuntu 12.04-13.10 in Virtualbox, so that's odd.

The fix appears to have come in xorg-server 1.15.0:

http://distrowatch.com/search.php?pkg=xorg-server&pkgver=1.15.0#pkgsearch

...I'm going to try Arch in VirtualBox tomorrow.

Ok. For me the sticky keys worked on 13.10 when running in VirtualBox on
Win 7 with sticky keys enabled. I even cheered up and thought it was fixed
untill I live bootet it...

2014-04-03 2:40 GMT+02:00 Steven Edwards <email address hidden>:

> StickyKeys failed for me when using Ubuntu 12.04-13.10 in Virtualbox, so
> that's odd.
>
> The fix appears to have come in xorg-server 1.15.0:
>
> http://distrowatch.com/search.php?pkg=xorg-
> server&pkgver=1.15.0#pkgsearch
>
> ...I'm going to try Arch in VirtualBox tomorrow.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998877
>
> Title:
> Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice
>
> Status in X.Org X server:
> New
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit
>
> When pressing a modifier once (ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, etc) it sticks for
> the next keypress. This is normal behavior. However, if pressed twice
> it should stick untill pressed a third time (this allows to simulate
> holding it down). Instead, when pressed twice the modifier gets
> "released".
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/998877/+subscriptions
>

Ok, I now can confirm that the sticky keys do work in a full installation
of Ubuntu 14.04, 64 bit. From my side, the bug can be closed now.

2014-04-03 8:41 GMT+02:00 Evgeni Bykarskij <email address hidden>:

> Ok. For me the sticky keys worked on 13.10 when running in VirtualBox on
> Win 7 with sticky keys enabled. I even cheered up and thought it was fixed
> untill I live bootet it...
>
>
>
> 2014-04-03 2:40 GMT+02:00 Steven Edwards <email address hidden>:
>
> StickyKeys failed for me when using Ubuntu 12.04-13.10 in Virtualbox, so
>> that's odd.
>>
>> The fix appears to have come in xorg-server 1.15.0:
>>
>> http://distrowatch.com/search.php?pkg=xorg-
>> server&pkgver=1.15.0#pkgsearch
>>
>> ...I'm going to try Arch in VirtualBox tomorrow.
>>
>> --
>> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
>> report.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998877
>>
>> Title:
>> Sticky keys disabled when pressed twice
>>
>> Status in X.Org X server:
>> New
>> Status in Ubuntu:
>> Confirmed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit
>>
>> When pressing a modifier once (ALT, SHIFT, CTRL, etc) it sticks for
>> the next keypress. This is normal behavior. However, if pressed twice
>> it should stick untill pressed a third time (this allows to simulate
>> holding it down). Instead, when pressed twice the modifier gets
>> "released".
>>
>> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/998877/+subscriptions
>>
>
>

Since "upgrading" to Ubuntu 14.04 I have found that the "Sticky Keys" function does not work. After playing about with the universal access system i managed to get the shift key to stick at least some of the time. I continue to have no sticky function for the 'ctrl' key. i am using the 32bit installation and the gnome classic desktop.