No problem Harold,
Such a gallant answer to my query deserves every bit of assistance I can
offer.
To answer your question; YES, this does happen outside of XTerm, to ME at
least, when I am running Gaim.
I am controlling/using the Redhat version of Gaim (native Linux, in other
words) through Cygwin's XFree on my Windows XP box (over a 100MB network),
which is in turn being controlled remotely by Netmeeting over a high-latency
network (the Internet)
OK, yes, I do seem to remember your original posts about this, which I
don't yet have enough X-savvy to understand totally, but I was trying to
maybe spark some idea by coming from a different direction.
In any case, if we can rule out my hypothesis, then that is good too: It
will be ONE down and X others to go, and eventually we WILL understand what
is going on here and we'll be able to fix it, I am sure.
Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: cygwin-xfree-owner at cygwin dot com [mailto:cygwin-xfree-owner at cygwin dot com]On
Behalf Of Harold L Hunt II
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 2:46 PM
To: cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com
Subject: Re: A thought about stuck keys
Jean-Claude,
Unfortunately, it is nowhere near that simple. Search the message
archives for my notes on this. I sent at least one rather long and
detailed message about this.
In brief, I ran XWin.exe in a debugger and watched the keypresses being
handled. The problem with your theory is that a single keypress message
results in a several function calls that drill deeper and deeper into
the generic X code... I drilled all the way down as far as I could
(following a single keypress message, mind you) and BAM! two key presses
show up in xterm from the processing of a single keypress message.
So, we definitely don't need any kind of debouncing algorithm at the
Cygwin/XFree86 level. This problem is either deep inside the generic X
code (I couldn't find anywhere where the keypress was being duplicated)
or it was happening in some Cygwin code.
I would not doubt it if this was due to something in Cygwin... since the
problem only comes out when the machine is under very heavy load (such
as running the Native GDI engine for XWin.exe) or perhaps when working
remotely. This indicates to me that the bug is either due to a race or
some sort of key repeat feature in Cygwin that is looking at the time
difference between the key press message (is it peeking at that or does
it have it cached somewhere?) and the time that the Cygwin keyboard
handler gets called. I could be talking total nonsense here, but this
seems plausible to me.
Here is a question: have you ever seen this happen in a program other
than xterm or a program that is running inside an xterm? If not, then
this may be a problem in xterm, not in Cygwin. I would really like to
know the answer to this one.
Harold
Jean-Claude Gervais wrote:
Hi,
I am using Microsoft Netmeeting to control a box running Cygwin
XFree, and
like some of you have already noted, occasionally whatever is typed on the
keyboard gets echoed several times, acting almost like a stuck key. This
seems to happen to me MUCH, MUCH more when I am working remotely as I am
than when I am logged in locally or have a one-hop connection.
I don't know XWindows very well, but it almost looks like the X
keyboard
event-handler is getting fooled because of the extra latency the
communications channel is adding to the event times.
For example, it seems like X sees a keydown message and responds to
it,
sees another (duplicate) keydown message (for the same key) and doesn't
make
sure there has been an intervening keyup message between the two. A
de-bouncing algorithm could do the job here.
Maybe this is normal; that multiple keydown messages will get sent
if you
hold down a key, but I am curious to know if this is something that can be
configured away.
So, in summary, I'd like to know if it is possible to configure
XFree to
NOT generate multiple keydown messages for ONE keypress.
Thanks.