[Lazarus] Lazarus eats comment characters using Swedish keyboard

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Martin Frb wrote:
> On 11/10/2015 17:33, Bo Berglund wrote:
>> I have investigated further now and when I use the Pi directly
>> (monitor connected to Pi and keyboard/mouse too) then the {} keys do
>> work.
>> When I noticed the problem I was using TightVNC to remotely access the
>> GUI. So somehow VNC might be involved here.
>>
> 
> http://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=17820
> 
> Never had time to work on it, and probably wont have anytime soon.
> 
> See note in bug. I dont know if same timestamp is allowed or if that is 
> an issue in VNC. But in the LCL (for any custom control) it is 
> interpreted as, this is the same keystroke, therefore it was already 
> handled.

There's been an issue with shift keys- particularly multiple shift keys- 
in VNC for a long time, and I think that more testing is in order before 
blaming Lazarus.

Specifically, back in the Delphi days I'd use a doubleclick on something 
with three shift keys pressed to enter "guru mode" (e.g. to resize 
windows that were normally locked), and I'm pretty sure that when I 
started accessing our application servers over VNC I had to relax this 
to any two shift keys.

If there's a shift-key problem under VNC, but it does not show up with 
any non-VNC connection (i.e. local X11 session, remote X11 session using 
e.g. XDMCP, or X11 tunneled over SSH) then it's definitely not a Lazarus 
issue.

If a Lazarus/LCL program works properly on a local X11 session, and 
there's shift key problems over one or more of the remote X11 connection 
types (remote using e.g. XDMCP, X11 tunneled over SSH) then it's 
probably worth looking whether anything in Lazarus or the LCL could be 
improved.

There's at least two VNC implementations in Debian and derivatives: Real 
VNC on everything except ARM as the default, and TightVNC on (I think) 
almost everything; there's also RDP implementations in most desktop 
environments for remote support purposes. The open source RealVNC 
implementation is now falling behind reality, VNC (Ltd, or Inc, or 
whatever they call themselves) are only maintaining a closed source 
version although I believe binaries are available for free download for 
small-scale use. I don't know to what extent TightVNC is in a better 
position.

If this continues to be a problem for anybody, I'd suggest duplicating 
it on an x86 system using RealVNC, and then seeing if it's fixed in 
their closed-source version. If it is, then confer with the Debian 
(etc.) VNC maintainers.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]