The Xorg keyboard layout for Spanish has used AltGr+4 (tilde) as a regular dead key for ages. Apparently this was changed to a dead key, even though Spanish has no use for this since we don't have any characters such as ã or õ (save for ñ, but that's a separate alphabet letter and gets its own key). This change is disruptive enough to cause data loss in common shell usage scenarios. A long and overwhelmingly negative response to this change can be read at the Debian bug tracker: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477197 The change was added and then reverted upstream years ago. For some reason, it just got readded: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/commit/?id=d99fded6663ff2e13dbac287ea0de52130ef93eb. This made it into 1.7, which just hit stable in Gentoo. I understand the reasoning that AltGr+4 is dead on Windows and also that AltGr+ñ produces non-dead ~, but this is a disruptive change that goes against many years of established tradition under Linux and requires end users to relearn their layout. This is particularly damaging when typing things like 'rm *~`, which instead results in 'rm *'. I almost got bit by this the first time I noticed. Older freedesktop bug report: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9763 New freedesktop bug report: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23876 Due to potential end-user frustration and even data loss (rm *~ is pretty common), I suggest this be patched out in Gentoo stable until upstream undoes it again. Keeping the old behavior certainly isn't going to make anyone mad for the time being, so I don't see a downside. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Upgrade to x11-misc/xkeyboard-config-1.7 2. dispatch-conf etc. 3. Configure Xorg for the Spanish keyboard layout and restart 4. Type AltGr+4 Actual Results: Instant ascii tilde. Expected Results: Dead key, tilde appears only after pressing the spacebar.
Created attachment 213425 [details, diff] Revert upstream change This reverts the offending change
Okay, I just did a --noconfmem reemerge and this is not reproducible. Sorry about that. I have no clue how the original issue happened but clearly I pointed my finger at the wrong change.
