On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Matthias Drochner wrote:

> What does this mean - does every keypress deliver a control
> character (if yes, which), or are outgoing characters interpreted
> in a wrong way by the screen (ie therminal emulation) part?

  Yes, every keypress delivers the control key corresponding to that key. 
They are interpreted as control characters by the shell (tcsh), except
that most show up as ^A, etc on the screen which they usually do not.
Useing the control key in addition to a key has the same effect as just
pressing that key.  I think this means it is probably not a character set
problem, though I could easily be mistaken.

> One thing I could imagine is that the "CTL" or the "ALT" key
> gets stuck somehow - does it look so? Does it happen in connection
> with screen switching? Is X running?

  I don't think the key is stuck, as it looks fine and pressing it
multiple times does not cause it to work properly again and I have had it 
happen on my desktop too. It could be something do do with old IBM PS/2
keyboards, though.  I've never had it happen under Win95 on the ThinkPad
or NT on the desktop.

  X usually isn't running.  I think I have had it happen which X running,
but I don't remember.  The last time it happened, I had not switched
screens at all since booting.  

  Also, another thing I forgot to mention:  if I switch screens after it
is in this control mode, the other screens are also in the control mode.
Also, dropping into the debugger does not help either (though I don't
know if there are any console problems that it would help).

  Next time it happens, I will try Ctl-Alt-Backspace and see if that
helps (I tried Ctl-Alt-Delete :).  I like the proposal someone had a while
back to make that do something meaningful for all of us former M$ users).  

Thanks (everyone) for your help!

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@pgh.net