RE: Backticks in 4.1.0

[Fabio Somenzi <Fabio at Colorado dot EDU>]

Here is some iteresting info.

I switched to a different keyboard, and the problem went away.
Unclear whether I have a faulty keyboard, or whether my keyboard
generates events that are misrepresented by xfree.

In an off-the-list exchange with Suhaib, I noticed that the spurious
backticks were reported by xev as pairs of KeyPress and KeyRelease
events occurring at exactly the same time.

These events do not seem to bother any other application.  Most
applications depend on Windows for their event processing, but some,
like NT-emacs, do intercept the keyboard and mouse events, if I'm not
mistaken.

Also, the rather terse user's guide says that my keyboard has
"advanced power management features."  From what I understand of
keyboards, that would require the BIOS to send some commands to the
keyboard, which is very unlikely to contain its own timer.  The
keyboard, in turn, may send back an ack.

I have no evidence that this is indeed what's going on.  Someone with
more experience of these issue may correct me.  I'm just trying to
argue that to my untutored eye it's not clear whether it's looking at
a broken keyboard, lack of proper event masking, lack of software
keyboard debouncing (less likely), or something else.

For the record, the "noisy" keyboard is a Dell natural keyboard from
1998.  The one I swapped for it is a MS natural keyboard, unknown
vintage, but probably a bit older.


Fabio


>>>>> "FS" == Fabio Somenzi <Fabio@Colorado.EDU> writes:

 FS> Suhaib,
 FS> Thanks for looking into this problem.  I've spent some more time to
 FS> try to figure it out, but to no avail.  I thought I may be be on to
 FS> something when I realized that IRQ 11 is shared by the video and
 FS> ethernet drivers, but this is true also of my laptop, when I use wired
 FS> ethernet.


 FS> Fabio


>>>>> "SS" == Suhaib Siddiqi <ssiddiqi@inspirepharm.com> writes:

 SS> Fabio,
 SS> I cannot reproduce it.  On my systems (Windows 2000, and ME) I do not see
 SS> it.  I left the server on for almost an hour and watched ;-)
 SS> I do not have Windows 98SE, but on Windows ME I also do not see backtick?

 SS> Suhaib