*BSD News Article 5806


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From: rcjvdb@rw9.urc.tue.nl (Jan van den Bosch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Problems in X
Keywords: X
Message-ID: <rcjvdb.717841374@rw9.urc.tue.nl>
Date: 30 Sep 92 08:22:54 GMT
References: <1992Sep25.035445.9630@mel.dit.csiro.au>
Sender: root@tuegate.tue.nl
Reply-To: rcjvdb@urc.tue.nl
Lines: 44

tim@kimba.catt.citri.edu.au (Tim Liddelow) writes:

>I have X installed fine.  The only problems I am encountering seem to
>be keyboard related.  Sometimes, when I enter text in an xterm or even
>under xdm, I will get uppercase characters and am unable to get back to lower
>case.  
I've had the same problems, allthough I used the starx script from the
"X FAQ" from Amacio Hasty, posted 5 aug.
The script from the FAQ: (Why is the X server not accepting characters
from the keyboard? )
* If you start X from your console, X is probably competing with
* your shell for characters from the keyboard. I usually start X from
* a script :
   xdm -config <where you installed X11>/lib/X11/xdm/xdm-config
   stty raw
   sleep 99999999
< end of faq>
The reason for the behaviour: The shift key is of make/break type,
generating two scancode's for each event. If the break (release)
event is not caught by the X program, then it (pccons) stays in the 
shift-state!
The same can happen with the control key.
What happens to me was: sometimes I started 'startx' in the background, 
because  I used to start most x programs like that, and the strange
shift problem was there!
Remedy: DON'T START startx IN THE BACKGROUND! 
>Is this the default handling (like login) which senses you have
>only uppercase available ?  Also, sometimes when running some x apps, like
>the new tetris that was posted recently, the input is supposed to be in
>the x app window, but the text appears in the xterm, even though the window
>manager focus is definitely in the X application.  
Must be a programm writing to stderr or stdout, I think the wm-focus
only handles intput.
>Also, the tty driver also
>seems to get into cooked mode with control characters from time to time.  This
See above (same as shift-problem)
>is very unfortunate if you happen to press 'D' ... ;-)
Indeed
>Also, the output of ps returns -1.0 for certain percentages - is this the
>floating point emulation bug ?  (I have no co-processor).

>Tim.
Jan v.d.Bosch
rcjvdb@urc.tue.nl