Bug 164852 - Keyboard shortcuts do not work when the layout differs from the English one.
Summary: Keyboard shortcuts do not work when the layout differs from the English one.
Status: NEEDINFO
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.8.4.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-01-25 16:26 UTC by Dima
Modified: 2025-03-13 02:30 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Dima 2025-01-25 16:26:55 UTC
Description:
Keyboard shortcuts do not work when the layout differs from the English one.

Changing the order of the layouts does not change the situation.
Ignoring the OS input language in the LO settings does not change the situation.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Switch to any language other than English.
2.Select the text in writer and press ctrl+B
3.You can see that the text has not become bold. Similarly, with copying and pasting text using hot keys - it doesn't work.

Actual Results:
Hotkeys only work with the English keyboard layout.

Expected Results:
Hot keys work correctly with any keyboard layout.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes

Additional Info:
Version: 24.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 480(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk4
Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU.UTF-8); UI: ru-RU
24.8.4-2
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Dima 2025-01-25 16:31:35 UTC
Forgot to clarify. The described behavior is observed when running with the parameter: SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4 libreoffice

The specified launch parameter is necessary due to the strong inertia when moving through text or cells.
Comment 2 BogdanB 2025-01-25 18:43:38 UTC
Dima, please wait for someone else to confirm that this is a bug. After that will be marked as New. Thanks for understanding.
Comment 3 Van 2025-01-25 19:32:15 UTC
I confirm the bug.

$ libreoffice --calc 
# Everything is ok, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Z work as expected
# regardless of the current keyboard layout.

$ SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4 libreoffice --calc
# Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Z work if English (US) keyboard layout is 
# active. If Russian keyboard layout is active, then Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, 
# Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Z have no effect.

Fedora 38 @ x86_64, Gnome 44.10 (session type is x11), LibreOffice 
7.5.9.2 50 (Build:2). (My setup is outdated a bit, I'll update it soon.)
Comment 4 BogdanB 2025-01-25 20:00:09 UTC
(In reply to Van from comment #3)
> I confirm the bug.
> 
> 7.5.9.2 50 (Build:2). (My setup is outdated a bit, I'll update it soon.)

Ok, try 24.8 or 25.2.
Comment 5 m_a_riosv 2025-01-25 21:10:21 UTC
If I'm not wrong, shortcuts are localized.

Maybe this https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-to-put-short-keys-in-english-in-a-spanish-libreoffice/8687 can help.
Comment 6 Dima 2025-01-26 05:47:41 UTC
I changed the interface language to English completely in the tab: Tools -> Options -> Lauguages and Locales -> General.
This change did not produce the expected result. 
Hot keys still work on the English layout. 
Hot keys do not work on the Russian layout.
Comment 7 mazaltov 2025-03-12 10:38:07 UTC
I confirm, it's more specific:

*Some* keys do not work under different keyboard layout(s).

Examples:
the key W is mapped in my keyboard layout to apostroph (')
Pressing Ctrl+W (english keyb) closes current document/workbook)
Pressing Ctrl+' (hebrew keyb)  does nothing. 
They are the same key, physically.

An example for expected behavior:
Pressing Ctrl+C (english keyb) AND pressing Ctrl+ב (hebrew keyb)  both do "COPY TO CLIPBOARD" (also the same physical key).

This is because Shortcuts are used to *simplify* and *standardize* user's work. The correct and expected behavior is using the same physical key for the same action: Shortcut keys use "muscle memory", and accessibility reasons (ctrl+C/ב) is just easy to press even with one hand.


Interestingly,
When you use Tools > Customize > Keyboard,
to map an action to  "Ctrl+," (control+comma key),
In my computer (Hebrew/English layouts), BOTH Ctrl+, AND ctrl+" ( but same character in different layouts) will invoke the same action in both cases, under 2 different physical keys.


The keys that I mapped to work "wrong" are all the keys which in my non-latin keyboard layout, are not letters; i.e. most punctuations: `/qw[];'\,.<>:";{}
Comment 8 Michael Weghorn 2025-03-13 02:28:04 UTC
(In reply to Dima from comment #0)
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1.Switch to any language other than English.
> [...]
> Additional Info:
> Version: 24.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
> Build ID: 480(Build:2)
> CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk4
> Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU.UTF-8); UI: ru-RU
> 24.8.4-2
> Calc: threaded

I'm not sure whether this is a bug. As comment 5 mentions, shortcuts are localized, so since you're using Russian language (as the "UI: ru-RU" above indicates), keyboard shortcuts will also be the Russian ones, not the English ones.

I can reproduce that the English Ctrl+B shortcut doesn't work for me when I switch UI language to German, but the German one Ctrl+Shift+F works then, which I think is the intended behavior.

Why do you expect using the English shortcut should work when the UI locale is set to something different?

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 7b9e27da2033192c628b23e4e1686209e951dadb
CPU threads: 32; OS: Linux 6.12; UI render: default; VCL: gtk4
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: de-DE
Calc: threaded
Comment 9 Michael Weghorn 2025-03-13 02:30:33 UTC
(In reply to Dima from comment #1)
> Forgot to clarify. The described behavior is observed when running with the
> parameter: SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4 libreoffice

The behavior described in comment 8 is the same for me with the gtk3 VCL plugin. Do you see different behavior when using gtk3 instead of gtk4?