contour: Modifier keys (such as AltGr-f for `[`, AltGr-c for `&`, etc.) not supported on Windows

Description

When pressing the key sequences AltGr-f, AltGr-c, AltGr-m, etc. (for [, & and < characters, respectively), the cursor blinks but nothing happens, the requested characters are not typed in.

Environment

Contour Version or Git commit hash: v0.1.0_prerelease_120 c2add127c061327876b718b61c2a1f3b94b274c1
Operating System (name / distribution / version): Windows 10 x64 1909
Contour configuration: default (? I think… I did not change anything.)
TERM environment variable: xterm-256color
Compiler version: N/A (Installed from release)
Keyboard layout: huHU

By default, the terminal starts PowerShell. The modifier characters work in the standard PowerShell window. I’m ssh over to a Linux machine, but it doesn’t help the case. (Normal Git Bash MINTTY works properly.)

Steps to Reproduce

Download release version for Windows, and unpack it.
Start bin/Contour.exe
Try to type in & by pressing AltGr-c, observe nothing happens.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Comments: 17 (17 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Does WSL behave the same as ssh?

@ferdinandyb Unfortunately, I cannot check this. I do not have WSL on the Windows system that I am ~~using~~ unfortunately forced to use, and enabling it would require administrator privileges that I do not have… I think we checked with @gamesh411 a while ago and if I recall correctly, the answer should be Yes, although memories could have gotten foggy by now.

whisperity on Sep 26, 2023

Yes, that’s the next comment. I’ve managed to hack contour up to my normal system (made a tarball, installed all the dependencies manually instead of using the release deb package), i.e. outside of Docker and whatnot.

And voilá, it works fine! Screenshot_20210217_131436

So this whole keyboard layout issue is a Windows-specific thing now. I do not have macOS to test.

Yes, I am Ubuntu 18.04, and it is very unlikely to change for a few years still. (It’s corporate machine, I have no control over the base distribution.) So at least as long as Ubuntu 18.04 is supported officially (until 2023 or somesuch, it’s 16.04 that is expiring this April) please don’t drop support.

whisperity on Feb 17, 2021

A few more context. I have tried the same workflow but with enUS layout, and that one works fine. (*) I’ve also tried with ruRU in three modes supported on Windows, both the standard YeTseUKE, the “QWERTY-fied” phonetic called YaShERT and the Win10-specific “mnenomic keyboard” (where you type out latinised words on a normal QWERTY keyboard but it rewrites them to Russian more or less…, e.g. typing moq cobaka sidit becomes моя собака сидит) and the only thing that is produced in lieu of the Cyrillic letters are a bunch of ???.

Turning over to cmd.exe after Countour spun up PowerShell doesn’t help either, furthering driving the point home that this is a feature missing from here.

Unfortunately, the only Linux machine I can get to right now is too old (Debian 10) to install the dependencies needed.

(*): Sadly, I can’t get used to the enUS layout when it comes to programming, the special symbol keys are just way too close to one another I constantly mistype them. When I was a child, our first computer that I had access to, for some weird reason, had a Dvorak keyboard. Then I went to school and they had stupid QWERTZ keyboards and in the past decades I’ve completely forgotten Dvorak. ☹️

whisperity on Dec 19, 2020