bugGNU Octave - Bugs: bug #50542, Can't type backslash on JIS...

 
 

bug #50542: Can't type backslash on JIS Keyboard

Submitter:  None
Submitted:  Tue 14 Mar 2017 08:44:55 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  GUI Severity:  3 - Normal
Priority:  1 - Later Item Group:  None
Status:  Confirmed Assigned to:  None
Originator Name:  P. Spaelti Originator Email:  -email is unavailable-
Open/Closed:  * Open Release:  * dev
Operating System:  * Mac OS Fixed Release:  None
Planned Release:  None
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Tue 07 May 2019 06:41:56 AM UTC, comment #6: 

So, I bought a Japanese keyboard (a Logicool k120 USB keyboard) and tested it with my macOS 10.14.4 Mac. (I have the Mac configured with English as my primary language, and no secondary languages. My $LANG is "en_US.UTF-8".) When I plugged it in and the keyboard-discovery wizard popped up, I hit the keys it asked me too, it detected it as a "JIS" keyboard, and I accepted that default.

In a Homebrew-installed Octave 5.1.0 in CLI mode run inside iTerm or Terminal.app, hitting the yen key produces a backslash.

In a GUI Octave from Octave.app 4.4.1 or 5.1.0 beta 3, in the Command Window, hitting the yen key produces a Yen symbol, and Option-Yen produces a backslash.

I don't have a bare-metal MacPorts setup that I can use to test the MacPorts installation of Octave, but I suspect it would be the same.

I can't reproduce Anonymous's "move to beginning of line" behavior. Since that was reported against 4.4.0 and not 4.4.1, maybe this can just be closed as fixed?

 Andrew Janke <apjanke>
Thu 14 Mar 2019 08:24:10 PM UTC, comment #5: 

I'm starting to hack on keyboard support in macOS because I'd like to fix bug #55913; I'll tackle this too.

I'll pick up a Japanese keyboard. Does this one look like the right thing?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Logitech-K120-USB-Wired-Keyboard-ENGLISH-JAPANESE-IL-RT6-9987-920-005005-UG/222998877697?epid=19006854201&hash=item33ebc4d601:g:3-QAAOSwZ~hbGY7n&autorefresh=true

@Anonymous or other users: Could you try using the Octave.app 5.1.0 beta build from http://octave-app.org/Developer-Downloads.html? That's the main build I'm testing on.

I agree that nobody reads the startup page, and a Help list posting would be visible to more users.

 Andrew Janke <apjanke>
Mon 26 Nov 2018 05:23:24 PM UTC, comment #4: 

There is a keybinding mechanism, builtin to the console widget we use for the command window, but we currently only use the default keyboard translator. Ideally we would use this mechanism to map special keyboards such as JIS, but (i) I don't have such keyboard at hand for testing (ii) I am not willing to learn Japanese :-).

@Anonymous: If you would be willing to work on this, and you already have a working Macports environment to build a development version of Octave, then I can help you.

As for documenting the workaround, I don't thing the startup page is the best place (No one reads it). Maybe posting a message on the Help mailing list with a meaningful title, e.g. "Backslash on Japanese Mac keyboards", is much more efficient.

Reopening the report.

 Pantxo Diribarne <pantxo>
Group Member
Sun 25 Nov 2018 03:06:01 AM UTC, comment #3: 

Hi, I am another macOS Octave user using a JIS keyboard.

As a background, JIS keyboards have a weird legacy issue in which the "yen" character (Unicode U+00A5) is mapped to 0x5c (due to Microsoft appropriating that code for the yen symbol in its Shift-JIS encoding scheme many decades ago). Even more confusingly, JIS keyboards built for Windows sometimes feature a separate "backslash" key, but it does not do anything in macOS by default.

That said, I'd like to report the following:

1) Octave 4.4.1 built from MacPorts and ran within Terminal.app works correctly, mapping the JIS keyboard "yen" key to backslash by default. For reference, my macOS session is configured to use Japanese by default, and LANG is set to ja_JP.UTF-8.

2) Octave 4.4.0 built as a Cocoa app does not correctly treat the yen key, moving the insertion point to beginning of word or line. The user may reasonable expect to either receive the backslash character or the Unicode yen character, but not this. The workaround is to use option key + yen; this is slightly cumbersome, but it does let me type the backslash character. It may be useful to put this information in the Japanese localized startup message.

 Anonymous
Fri 27 Apr 2018 05:21:01 PM UTC, comment #2: 

No further information from reporter, closing as invalid.

 Mike Miller <mtmiller>
Group Member
Wed 15 Mar 2017 10:19:30 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Hi,

Thanks for your report. Octave 3.8.0 is a fairly old version of Octave and keyboard inputs were known to be problematic on mac for non english keyboards. Could you test with Octave 4.2? There is no available dmg, but I think most package managers like fink, macports, hombrew have an up to date package.

 Pantxo Diribarne <pantxo>
Group Member
Tue 14 Mar 2017 08:44:55 AM UTC, original submission:  

I just downloaded and installed Octave for the first time on a mac.
I have a Japanese keyboard with a "¥" to the left of the delete. This key does not work properly in the command window of the GUI.

If pressed it moves the insertion to the beginning of the command line. From there I can not move back to the end of the command line.
(Arrow keys do not work either. Perhaps this is normal?)

I cannot type a backslash or a a pipe, etc.

I was unable to find any reference to this problem in the wiki or the previous bug reports.

 Anonymous

 

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  • -email is unavailable- added by apjanke (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by pantxo (Posted a comment)
  • -email is unavailable- added by None (Submitted the item)

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    Follow 8 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2019-03-14 mtmiller Carbon-CopyRemoved 80942 -
    2019-01-24 mtmiller Priority5 - Normal 1 - Later
        Release3.8.0 dev
    2018-11-26 pantxo StatusInvalid / Not an Octave Bug Confirmed
        Open/ClosedClosed Open
    2018-04-27 mtmiller StatusNeed Info Invalid / Not an Octave Bug
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2017-03-15 pantxo StatusNone Need Info

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