Bug 160474 - CTRL+; does not insert date because of IBus emoji picker shortcut
Summary: CTRL+; does not insert date because of IBus emoji picker shortcut
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.2.0.4 release
Hardware: All Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL: https://askubuntu.com/questions/13700...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Shortcuts-Accelerators
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Reported: 2024-04-02 03:38 UTC by Tom
Modified: 2024-05-23 07:55 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Tom 2024-04-02 03:38:17 UTC
Description:
When trying to use the 'Ctrl+;' keyboard shortcut to insert the current date in a LibreCalc spreadsheet cell it instead inserts a underlined 'e'. The Insert Date in the pulldown menu (which shows 'Ctrl+;' as the shortcut) does work. Ctrl+; has been a insert date shortcut standard for many years in LibreCalc and Microsoft Excel, but from what I have found from several hours of searching, is that now in Calc it is used to insert an emoji. Either the insert emoji shortcut needs to be changed or the shortcut notation in the pulldown menu needs to be updated

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Try inserting current date using Ctrl+; shortcut in a Calc cell
2. returns an underscored e in he cell
3.

Actual Results:
Select a Calc cell. Press 'Ctrl+;', the shortcut places a underlined e in the cell

Expected Results:
Expected the shortcut to insert the current date in the cell.

FYI, this behavior also happens in 24.2.1.2 release


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes

Additional Info:
Version: 7.3.7.2 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 30(Build:2)
CPU threads: 6; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 1:7.3.7-0ubuntu0.22.04.4
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Tom 2024-04-02 03:42:02 UTC
Researching found that if I enter Ibus-setup and delete the Ctrl+; emoji entry the shortcut does as it is supposed to. found this in an obscure Q and A forum.
Comment 2 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-04-02 07:49:41 UTC
(side note: LO's internal Emoji picker was removed in LO 7.5)

GNOME has an Emoji picker popdown widget, which is not yet supported in LO (see bug 156427).
For me, on Ubuntu 22.04 + GNOME 42.9 with a German keyboard, the Ctrl + ; shortcut does work to pick an emoji in native GTK apps like Gedit or To Do.But not in LO.

However, as you've seen, IBus provides this alternative emoji picker, which _does_ work in LO. For me, it is done using Ctrl + . (dot).
Try the following combination as an example: Ctrl + . t a d a Space Enter

Not sure why we have different default shortcuts for it thought ("." vs ";").

As far as I understand it, as this is the OS / another app intercepting a shortcut before LO can, there isn't much that can be done (given the number of LO shortcuts, it is impossible to avoid existing shortcuts in a cross-OS and cross-DE manner).
Same issue can be seen in e.g. Gnumeric, which has similar shortcuts as LO Calc.

Version: 24.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 069bf61cea5e3aea07ffd5a1bb9f55324651cb35
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.5; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 3 m_a_riosv 2024-04-02 09:09:27 UTC
(In reply to Stéphane Guillou (stragu) from comment #2)
> ........
> Not sure why we have different default shortcuts for it thought ("." vs ";").
> 

Maybe because ';' needs the shift key on some language keyboards, like Spanish.
And LO doesn't intercept it with [Ctrl+Shift+;] as if it was [Ctrl+;].
The issue doesn't happen with '.', I think it is a non shift key in all keyboard layouts.
Comment 4 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-04-23 07:00:36 UTC
See also bug 158355, which suggests allowing different shortcuts depending on desktop environment (which could help here).
Comment 5 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2024-04-23 08:14:04 UTC
- In 2021, Ctrl + Period became the new IBus default for the emoji picker: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/commit/b952d30a1b7c741052c168fe1081ecb4d4b1c034
- In 2022, IBus added Ctrl + Semicolon as an alternative to cater for keyboard layouts where the period is accessed with Shift: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/commit/d9ff2bb6b04a7cf7d99f4e9832b4b8905858178c
- Conflict of Ctrl + Semicolon was also reported on the IBus bugtracker: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2390
- As a solution, IBus dev suggests changing the shortcuts to use the Super key instead: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2390#issuecomment-1210257131
- Currently, it uses Super + Period and Super + Semicolon: https://github.com/ibus/ibus/blame/main/data/dconf/org.freedesktop.ibus.gschema.xml#L254
...which should solve this issue for users of recent versions of IBus (unless distributions change it).