Bug #162726

May 14, 2008 6:29 pm Dave Neary gnome
Select All: Ctrl A: Selects all content in the current document.

GNOME HIG v2

Whose bright idea was it to have Ctrl-A close the current note in the version of Tomboy shipping with Ubuntu 8.04? This was a really bad idea.

Update: Owen Taylor on #gnome-hackers, and 5 minutes later Vincent Untz in a comment, hit on the answer: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162726

The upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 had installed the US layout on me, even though I have an AZERTY keyboard (which was the layout selected). So when I hit Ctrl-A, GNOME was helpfully saying that I must have really meant Ctrl-Q. This is really useful if you’re using a non-latin layout, since you can still use Latin shortcuts by installing a US keyboard layout, but if you have another Latin keyboard layout, this sucks big-time.

So, in fact, Tomboy wasn’t closing the current note, it was closing all notes (it just happens that I only ever had one note open at the time).

8 Responses

  1. chrismurf Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    For me, CTRL+A does exactly what you’d expect — select all text. I’m running Hardy 8.04?

  2. alejo Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

    Same for me.. it works like spected

  3. Jonathan Carter Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    Hmm, ^A Selects the text as expected, and ^W closes the window. Maybe you pressed the wrong button?

  4. Dave Neary Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    xev says I’m hitting Ctrl_L+A.

    Ctrl_R+A does the same thing.

    Works fine in every app except Tomboy.

    Weird indeed.

  5. Dave Neary Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    Also, what made me suspect there were shenanigans going on was that when I right-click in a note, there’s no shortcut key beside “Select All”

    Dave.

  6. Dave Neary Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

    xev on the Tomboy window gives the following output when I hit Ctrl-A:

    UnmapNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    event 0×320007e, window 0×320007e, from_configure NO

    FocusOut event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    mode NotifyNormal, detail NotifyVirtual

    ConfigureNotify event, serial 21, synthetic YES, window 0×320007e,
    event 0×320007e, window 0×320007e, (5,21), width 450, height 360,
    border_width 0, above 0×0, override NO

    ReparentNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    event 0×320007e, window 0×320007e, parent 0×5e,
    (0,25), override NO

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    atom 0×109 (_NET_WM_DESKTOP), time 163288483, state PropertyDelete

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    atom 0×10f (_NET_WM_STATE), time 163288483, state PropertyDelete

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0×320007e,
    atom 0×76 (WM_STATE), time 163288483, state PropertyNewValue

  7. Vincent Untz Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    Just a guess, but: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162726

  8. tuXXX Says:
    May 14th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Yeah I had this problem some time ago with another app (xchat), hitting ctrl+a was just quitting it (and if I remember correctly, ctrl+x too).

    I think that this behaviour of gnome is bad.