losing keyboard characters in tigerVNC screen session ?

pisti · 10-12-2017, 02:33 PM

i periodically lose the following keyboard characters in a tigerVNC screen that a CLI lover like me critically depends on :

Code:

~ @ # { } <

does anybody know how to re-map or re-install lost keyboard characters in an X session ? but why does this annoyance happen in first place ??? i don't know currently of any other solution than to kill and restart the VNC session...

pisti · 10-13-2017, 03:38 PM

just to explain my problem better : with xev (an X-event printer) i can easily trace the character '2' button press - while '@' as <shift><2> is only picked up as a <shift> event but not as a '@' character !

it seems that the SHIFT+'~@#{}<' key combinations have lost their meaning and i have no clue for now how to recreate them in my virtual VNC screen. this key binding problem appears to be a somewhat random issue...

moreover, i use VNC with virtual FVWM screens and display them in physical FVWN or XFCE4 screens. i am not sure yet if fvwm + xfce4 creates the problem as i cannot replicate it, it has its own agenda.

furthermore, on one of the physical screens where this virtual FVWM VNC screen is displayed at times i also have a VirtualBox running with win8 - that could be the culprit too of course...

any input ?

pisti · 10-13-2017, 09:01 PM

here an addendum #2 : it seems i loose the <shift> + "~@#{}<" keyboard character combinations only with the EN english language keyboard map while switching to HU or CA-FR the same keystroke combinations work perfectly fine though produce evidently different characters. switching back and forth between languages makes no difference and does not correct the problem described above or earlier.

in my ~/.xinitrc which allows to switch languages maps with <L-shift> + <R-shift> :

Code:

 setxkbmap -layout us,hu,ca -variant fr -option grp:switch,grp:shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll

how does one recreate key-stroke-combinations for ~@#{}< ? using xmodmap ?

pisti · 10-15-2017, 11:31 AM

addendum #3 : partial success ! i updated my ~/.Xmodmap file with the following lines :

Code:

keycode 49              = grave asciitilde
keycode 11              = 2 at
keycode 12              = 3 numbersign
keycode 34              = bracketleft braceleft
keycode 35              = bracketright braceright
keycode 59              = comma less

but that solved the problem only for the first three symbols ~ @ # - though not for the latter three symbols { } < !

i also played with xmodmap options such as remove and clear - without success. meanwhile i totally screwed up my keycode 11 for keysyms '2' and 'at' and subsequently emacs running in tmux refuses to accept '2' ...sigh...

how can i avoid restarting my VNC session ? how does one reestablish the characters { } < ?