Bug #162726

6:29 pm 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 -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:

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

  2. alejo Says:

    Same for me.. it works like spected

  3. Jonathan Carter Says:

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

  4. Dave Neary Says:

    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:

    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:

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

    UnmapNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    event 0x320007e, window 0x320007e, from_configure NO

    FocusOut event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    mode NotifyNormal, detail NotifyVirtual

    ConfigureNotify event, serial 21, synthetic YES, window 0x320007e,
    event 0x320007e, window 0x320007e, (5,21), width 450, height 360,
    border_width 0, above 0x0, override NO

    ReparentNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    event 0x320007e, window 0x320007e, parent 0x5e,
    (0,25), override NO

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    atom 0x109 (_NET_WM_DESKTOP), time 163288483, state PropertyDelete

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    atom 0x10f (_NET_WM_STATE), time 163288483, state PropertyDelete

    PropertyNotify event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x320007e,
    atom 0x76 (WM_STATE), time 163288483, state PropertyNewValue

  7. Vincent Untz Says:

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

  8. tuXXX Says:

    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.

Leave a Comment

Your comment

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.