Why does my computer modify the order of some characters typed?

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1

I'm having a strange problem that I'm not sure if it's related to Google Chrome (or it's "Animated tabs" plugin that I've installed), my OS (Ubuntu 13.10 + GNome) or my keyboard (Dell Vostro's one).

I'm a fast typer and key shortcuts fan. Since I installed the "Animated Tabs" plugin, a funny random gif is shown on every new tab that I open. If instantly after pressing the "new tab" shortcut, I start to type, it has a small delay of a few milliseconds during the page loading until the keys are displayed in the search/url bar. But, if I try to type "Face" for Facebook, almost everytime it understands "Faec".

It's not very annoying, but I'm curious about it. I know it's caused by the delay that the AT+ plugin creates, but why this order? Why only the "e" and "c" are mixed? What could be making this "dyslexia" happen? I guess that is because Chrome is receiving all the keystrokes at the exact same time, and inputing them in some kind of defined order.

Nazareno Lorenzo

Posted 2014-09-30T20:45:42.370

Reputation: 131

Are you sure your fingers aren't tripping over each-other? – Alex McKenzie – 2014-09-30T20:58:32.323

1I'm sure. It's always the same two characters mixed, and only happens on this PC (I use two more); and It happens ~ the 70% of the times – Nazareno Lorenzo – 2014-09-30T21:11:21.593

I have the same (or at least a similar) problem. I am using Lubuntu. In Chromium, when I open a new tab and type some stuff in fast, it mixes up the letters. This seems to happen only shortly after I've opened the new tab and only in the address bar. I am not using the animated tabs plugin. – Will Newton – 2014-10-04T07:10:55.600

Make sure you don't have a "foreign" keyboard definition enabled that is attempting to recognize key combos and "translate" them for you. – Daniel R Hicks – 2014-12-09T13:15:58.560

1Disable the animated tabs plug-in and see if the problem disappears. – fixer1234 – 2014-12-09T14:43:36.650

I finally disabled it, and the problem still stays; also another used commented here that he has the same problem without using it. I noticed that this happens not only on new tabs, but when the pc slows-down (That happens for a sec when a new tab is open, but also happens when I'm running a heavy process in the background) – Nazareno Lorenzo – 2014-12-10T16:44:29.357

I have this problem too. It's because the address bar has some sort of race condition between when it appends your new keystroke and when it advances the cursor, probably from lag trying to bring up address bar suggestions. I switched to Firefox. – erjiang – 2015-03-14T06:21:52.340

I had this problem on ubuntu 14.04 x64, chrome 38. I disabled all chrome extensions and the problem went away. When I enabled one plugin (LastPass) the problem happens again. For whatever reason, it's very noticeable when composing a message in gmail. – dgmdan – 2015-03-21T00:23:14.617

Answers

1

Apparently this is a bug in ibus which has been fixed.

But if you are on an older system, you can try the following to work around the problem:

  1. Close the browser.

  2. Restart the ibus daemon:

    $ IBUS_ENABLE_SYNC_MODE=1 ibus-daemon -xrd

  3. Start Chrome again, passing it an environment variable:

    $ XMODIFIERS= google-chrome

The above process came from here.

That actually reports that either 2 or 3 should work. But 3 alone did not work for me.

joeytwiddle

Posted 2014-09-30T20:45:42.370

Reputation: 1 346

THANK YOU! This has been driving me nuts for a while but doing steps 2 and 3 fixed it for me! Unfortunately, it prevents me from using other ibus input methods, but hopefully everything will be fine in next Ubuntu LTS. – erjiang – 2015-12-28T00:01:13.153

Asked: 2014-09-30T20:45:42.370

Viewed: 273 times

Active: 2015-12-17T10:49:01.650