bug#7637: 24.0.50; Caps Lock triggers set-mark-command

bug#7637: 24.0.50; Caps Lock triggers set-mark-command

[Mitja Uršič]

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Turning on caps lock also turns on set-mark-command.
All C- and M- moving commands from then on mark text
into a region.
This does not apply for the four arrow keys.

To reproduce:
1) Write some text.
2) Set caps lock to on.
3) Move around the text with C-p, C-n, M-b, M-f and other
C- and M- keys for moving point.

Region is now marked despite that no C-<SPC> was pressed
or otherwise set-mark-command invoked.


In GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.12)
of 2010-12-13 on tiger
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10402000
Important settings:
value of $LC_ALL: nil
value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
value of $LC_TIME: nil
value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8
value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
tooltip-mode: t
mouse-wheel-mode: t
tool-bar-mode: t
menu-bar-mode: t
file-name-shadow-mode: t
global-font-lock-mode: t
blink-cursor-mode: t
auto-composition-mode: t
auto-encryption-mode: t
auto-compression-mode: t
line-number-mode: t
transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
M-x r e p o r t - e m <tab> <return>

Recent messages:
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.

Features:
(shadow sort gnus-util mail-extr message sendmail regexp-opt rfc822 mml
easymenu mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mailabbrev mail-utils
gmm-utils mailheader emacsbug tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks
lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image fringe
lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar
mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian
utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean
japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian
cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev
loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files text-properties overlay
md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget
hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process dbusbind
dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk
x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

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bug#7637: 24.0.50; Caps Lock triggers set-mark-command

[Chong Yidong]

A user has reported that under a certain KDE setting, Caps Lock breaks
Emacs by making every motion key a shift-motion key, thus breaking the
shift-selection feature.  Does anyone have KDE installed to test this?


Mitja Uršič <odtihmal@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm using it in Debian Lenny with KDE.
> I do have Caps Lock and Control swapped by kcontrol, though.
>
>  > Turning on caps lock also turns on set-mark-command.
>  > All C- and M- moving commands from then on mark text
>  > into a region.
>  > This does not apply for the four arrow keys.
>  >
>  > To reproduce:
>  > 1) Write some text.
>  > 2) Set caps lock to on.
>  > 3) Move around the text with C-p, C-n, M-b, M-f and other
>  > C- and M- keys for moving point.
>  >
>  > Region is now marked despite that no C-<SPC> was pressed
>  > or otherwise set-mark-command invoked.

bug#7637: 24.0.50; Caps Lock triggers set-mark-command

[David De La Harpe Golden]

On 20/12/10 15:32, Chong Yidong wrote:
> A user has reported that under a certain KDE setting, Caps Lock breaks
> Emacs by making every motion key a shift-motion key, thus breaking the
> shift-selection feature.  Does anyone have KDE installed to test this?
>

Certainly KDE has:
System Settings -> Personal -> Regional & Language
-> Keyboard Layout -> Advanced
-> CapsLock key behaviour
-> CapsLock toggles Shift so all keys are affected

(and a bunch of other options)

i.e. It makes the caps lock key a true "shift lock", but it works "as 
intended" AFAICS - cursor keys will in effect be shifted (and therefore 
sweep out selections) when the shiftlock is on, and not when the 
shiftlock is off. (tested). On my machine, when active, both the caps 
lock and scroll lock LEDs are lit when the "shift lock" is activated.

It's essentially equivalent to something you can do on the command line 
with setxkbmap, in fact the settings dialog prints the command line it's 
using at the bottom e.g.
setxkbmap -option caps:shiftlock

My understanding is that it's a chording-avoidance accessibility 
feature, and there's little emacs can or should do about it. KDE Kate 
and other X11 apps are affected in the same way as emacs, unsurprisingly.

If you want normal caps lock behaviour, i.e. letters are capitalised but 
other stuff isn't shifted, then, er, leave it as a caps lock, not a 
shift lock.