Keyboard input "randomly" stops (Slow Keys too easy to accidentally trigger)
Submitted by Jonathan Nieder
Assigned to Xorg Project Team
Description
Hi,
As described at http://bugs.debian.org/677173 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/816764, some users accidentally holding down shift too long end up pressing some other modifiers and then are confused when applications stop accepting input. Restarting the X server fixes it, as does holding down shift again if you know to do so.
Some people reporting running into this scenario:
Vincent Lefevre Wookey Bjørn Mork
They are bright people, and if they find this counterintuitive, I expect many others will as well. A common way to run into this is to hold down shift while performing some action with the mouse that takes at least 10 seconds.
Julien Cristau pointed reporters to the blog entry
http://who-t.blogspot.fr/2012/06/xkb-slowkeys.html
so it looks like this usability problem is known, but there doesn't seem to be a bug filed for it.
Of course, fixing it is tricky. The same annoying keyboard shortcut is used on Windows, although there the result is an annoying dialog box popping up instead of the keyboard seeming to just stop working. (I don't suggest copying that. :)) Making sure this feature remains discoverable might require some coordination with Desktop Environment authors, to put an appropriate entry in a keyboard layout switcher on the panel, for example (sorry, I'm out of touch with the DE world).
Of course, as long as the education problem is solved somehow, the appropriate fix on the X side is obvious. The keyboard shortcut needs to be harder to accidentally trip. Perhaps it could be made configurable to allow people to experiment to find a good one.
Sorry for the ramble, and hope that helps, Jonathan