Hi,

I have a problem with keyboard layouts in openSUSE 11.1/11.2 and KDE 4.3. My normal German layout works fine, but any additional layouts won't work properly. Keystrokes either produce no reaction, or random characters - at one point, the US-English layout produced Hebrew letters, Hebrew produced Greek, and Greek US-English (IIRC).

I opened a thread in a German openSUSE support forum, but the supporter was unable to help me due to lack of time. And since the problem seems to be KDE-specific, I decided to come here for help.

I have played around with different keyboard drivers (inspiron <-> generic 104) and different keyboard layouts and layout orders.
So far I found out that under openSUSE 11.1, the Yast keyboard module was able to change xorg.conf, but not KDE system settings. Changes that were made in KDE did not affect xorg.conf at all! This resulted in Yast and KDE having 2 different orders in which additional layouts were displayed (with the tray icon following the KDE settings). When I aligned the order of layouts in Yast and KDE, I was able to get a Greek layout to work in addition to the German; a US-English and a Hebrew layout still would not work.

In 11.2 there doesn't seem to be a section in Yast about the keyboard anymore, so I'm left with KDE system settings. However, the problem remains.

This is the interesting part of my xorg.conf:

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Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "de,gr,il,us"
  Option       "XkbModel" "inspiron"
  Option       "XkbOptions" "eurosign:4"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
  Option       "XkbVariant" "deadgraveacute,polytonic,biblical,alt-intl"
EndSection

However, I could have a different driver and a different set of layouts selected in KDE without it affecting xorg.conf.

Tell me if I'm in the wrong place with this or if my explanation of the problem was too difficult to follow. Any help will be appreciated!

Does no one have even the slightest clue? Or will I have to ask in yet another forum?

Unfortunately changing keyboard layouts is not to common for most people, who have the appropriate layout selected during installation.

openSUSE seems to have removed the Sax2 links from YaST, but the application itself is still there.

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kdesu /sbin/sax2

I could get it to start with

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kdesu sax2

. However sax2 doesn't seem to contain the keyboard module anymore. Thank you for your help so far!

Unfortunate. Perhaps you could check the xorg.conf of a previous 11.1 system for any guidance? I don't usually use any of the keyboard layout features.

This is how it looked in 11.1 before I did the update - when the problem had already occured. It's more or less the same file since I did the online update. (However I have changed the configuration since.)

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# Section "InputDevice"
#   Driver      "kbd"
#   Identifier  "Keyboard[0]"
#   Option      "Protocol" "Standard"
#   Option      "XkbLayout" "de,gr,us"
#   Option      "XkbModel" "inspiron"
#   Option      "XkbOptions" "eurosign:4"
#   Option      "XkbRules" "xfree86"
#   Option      "XkbVariant" "deadgraveacute,polytonic,alt-intl"
# EndSection

This is from a backup from July:

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Section "InputDevice"
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "de"
  Option       "XkbModel" "inspiron"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
  Option       "XkbVariant" "deadgraveacute"
EndSection

This is how it looks at the moment:

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Section "InputDevice"
  # Driver "kbd" will be disabled unless 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"'
  # is set in "ServerFlags" section.
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "de,gr,il,us"
  Option       "XkbModel" "inspiron"
  Option       "XkbOptions" "eurosign:4"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
  Option       "XkbVariant" "deadgraveacute,polytonic,biblical,alt-intl"
EndSection

Very interesting, that remark about the driver. It turns out 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"' actually IS set. I disabled it just to see what will happen. The effects are interesting. Some keys don't work in a very familiar way. In openSUSE 11.1 I used the X11 repository due to problems with my graphics driver. Three times the xorg updates would mess up my keyboard layout. And this is exactly how my keyboard acted at that time. Now it seems that possibly, every time this happened, this particular setting in xorg.conf was changed back and forth.
It is good that I had figured out how to solve that problem. I had to update /home/user/.Xmodmap, which I did. It's interesting that this also changes how the other layouts work.

If that doesn't help, maybe we can follow the lead that KDE doesn't seem to be able to modify xorg.conf. Since sax2 doesn't do it anymore, I have to edit xorg.conf every time I want to make changes...

By going back to the gen104 keyboard driver, including an old Xmodmap, and by aligning the settings in KDE and xorg.conf, I was somehow able to make all keyboard layouts work. It was definitely a problem of conflicting keymaps - I daresay as the layman that I am.

I am only left with one problem now: I can't seem to get the third level to work (that is, I know it doesn't work in German, but I can't prove it for the other layouts). It DOES work in any Qt software, like in KDE4 apps, or basket (which is still KDE3). But it doesn't work in gtk programs (and others).

The third level is configured in KDE, GNOME and X.org. All settings are the same. GNOME- and other apps seem take over X.org settings.

Why doesn't the third level work in X.org, and why does it work in KDE?

Is there any way to completely reset any kind of keyboard configuration? Is there a file I can rename or delete so I won't be trying to make it work forever?

Thankful for any kind of help!

KDE simply sets the settings in Xorg, as user applications do not have access to the terminal devices ( insufficient permissions ). Try restarting these applications after changing the keyboard layout.

My problem is that on my installation, KDE doesn't seem to set X.org at all - that means changes to the keyboard drivers/layout in KDE won't be reflected in xorg.conf.

The problem persisted even after restarting KDE several times

Interesting though: the third level does work in qt3, but not in some KDE4 software like konsole or yakuake.

KDE does not change xorg.conf, it performs a "runtime" change in X, using the command shown at the bottom of the window when setting keyboard layouts.

Very interesting! It does erode my theory somewhat though...
How come there are no conflicts when settings in KDE and X differ?

Except I wish there was a way the third level would work in all apps.

Runtime settings always override those in Xorg.conf

I figured out that everything works perfectly when I have only three layouts. For on the other hand will destroy the third level. Weird.

That is likely a bug in the keyboard layout applet, please file a bug.