Paragraph movements with '{' and '}' do not work with French (azerty) keyboard layout.

[Adnn]

Hi,

I just installed the commit: 80a1fd6 from branch master on Xcode 5.1.1

While the paragraph navigation works with the 'British' keyboard layout, it does not work with any of the 'French' layouts that ship with OS X. I suppose this can be due to the fact you need to press 'option' key to generate the '{' and '}' characters in the 'French' layout, while it is not required with the 'British' layout.

[JugglerShu]

So what is the expected behaviour? How should it work with French keyboard? Sorry but I do not have French keyboard I do not know how Vim behave with the keyboard.

[Adnn]

Hi,

Thank you for taking time to look into that. The expected behaviour is the same independently of the configured layout: when you issue the previous-paragraph or next-paragraph command (which are mapped to '{' and '}' by default.), the cursor moves to the previous (resp. next) paragraphs. The expected behaviour is pretty straightforward, and works as expected with the British layout (and I assume other QWERTY layouts). But when you issue a '{' or a '}' with the french keyboard layout installed, nothing happens. I suspect this is because you need to press the 'option' key to get the character.

You do not need a physical french keyboard to observe that, you just need to switch the installed keyboard layout.

I hope this clarification was helpful ? Please let me know if I can give you any further detail.

Best regards,

[JugglerShu]

OK. I understand it. I still do not know how I can fix it but I'll try.

[Adnn]

Thank you !

[heitorfr]

Hi. Exactly the same happens with the Portuguese layout. Another example is the f F t T navigation keys - they work fine unless I try to navigate to a character that requires the option key on the Portuguese keyboard layout e.g. [ { } ]. Thanks for your time!

[JugglerShu]

I added an option to avoid the problem.
The option is alwaysuseinputsource
You can set it in your .xvimrc file. like

  set alwaysuseinputsource

or

  set auis

This option should let you input '{' or other characters correctly.

This is a kind of trial commits. Since I do not use French or Portuguese language and keyboard, I do not know if this solves all the problems and also this may cause another problem.

This option always send keyboard input to input source. In french keyboard character like "{" is generated by the input source so we need this and it should work fine if this option is on.
The downside of this option is that input source may waits for additional input to fix the character to send to text view. This is not always preferable behaviour especially when you are in NORMAL mode in Vim. For example, in Japanese we have to input 'ka' to input Japanese character 'か'. In normal mode if you want to make cursor go up, you input 'k' but input source does not send 'k' immediately since it waits next input, which does not make the cursor go up.
To avoid this I haven't send the keyboard event to input source in normal mode until now.
Now you have this option you can choose one you like. (Probably in French or Portuguese setting this option is better)
Actually this is the problem not only in XVim but also in real Vim.

Anyway please try it and let me know how you feel.

[JugglerShu]

Forgot to say that it is in develop branch. It hasn't been merged into master.

[Adnn]

Hi,

First of all, thank you very much for your work on that. The changes, when activating 'auis' option, actually solve the problem in my environment.
Sadly, it introduced another change in the behaviour:

• The input is not repeated anymore when I leave a keyboard key pushed down. I observed this problem in NORMAL, INSERT and VISUAL modes (at least, I did not try others).
  • This problem is not happening whit characters that need the 'option' modifier key to be pressed (quite ironic).
  • This problem is happening only when I set the 'auis' option.

Thank you for reading, and for the support you are providing for XVim !

[heitorfr]

I can report exactly the same as Adnn for the Portuguese setting. Thanks for you effort.

[JugglerShu]

Hm... I cannot reproduce the problem. When I set auis and my input source to French, I still can move cursor continuously by keeping 'k' pushed down.
When you keep down a key what is happening? Do you hear the error beep? I need some more hints to fix the problem.

[Adnn]

That is very surprising, I wonder what is the difference in our environments to explain such difference in behaviour ?
Perhaps is it something in your .xvimrc ? Mine is empty, do you want me to try with yours ?

So, to try to answer your questions:

• When I keep the key down (for keys not requiring the 'option' modifier), the key operation is taking place exactly once (i.e., exactly like when pushing a key once and releasing it 'instantly').
• Your second question makes me realise I never heard the error bell with XVim. I tried to trigger the beep by going to the first character of a line and pushing 'j', but no sound was heard (I also tried to issue the command set errorbells first). For this reason I do not hear a beep when keeping a key pushed down either, but that does not tell you anything I'm afraid.
  • Any clue on how I could activate the error bell with XVim ?

[JugglerShu]

The reason why I asked about error bell is because when I tried to input '{' by French input source I heard error bell. I do not know why. When I kept push down Option + "=" (I forgot actual key to produce the letter, so maybe different), it kept inputting '{' continuously with beeping.

So anyway something is different.
Does it happen if you change the input source from French to US or other input source?

[Adnn]

You heard the error bell before applying your fix right ? I guess it was the system's error bell (the system did not knew what to do with the '{' scancode it just received) , not XVim's.

I tried both the British and U.S. keyboard layouts. It had the following behaviour:

• The key repetitions is still not working on most keys (example, on character movements 'j', 'm' ...)
• The key repetitions works for the paragraph movements with '{' and '}', even though to input them in those layouts we do not use the option modifier, but the maj modifier.

edit: as an additional test, I tried in all 3 layouts (French, GB, US) if the key repetition was working, with auis option, for the maj+j key: it does not. Repetition works without the auis option.

Once more, thank you very much for investing time into this issue. If you want me to try with a specific .xvimrc file and see if the problem still shows up, just let me know.