How to fix broken Alt key?

[orschiro]

Somewhat critical issue for me:

• I cannot use Alt + F4 to close a window
• Alt + Tab is not working to switch windows

There seems to be something broken with the Alt key.

Related to the HUD feature?

I have the latest updates installed. How can I fix it on my system?

Thanks!

[elcste]

If it's related to HUD, you can switch panel layout in MATE Tweak to one that doesn't have the global menu or just delete the global menu applet.

You could also try remapping the alt key to another key with xkb, which you can do in the keyboard layout options. (I'm on my phone or I would give the exact title.)

[orschiro]

If it's related to HUD, you can switch panel layout in MATE Tweak to one that doesn't have the global menu

I am going to test this. Which one doesn't have the HUD and which one does?

or just delete the global menu applet.

How do I do that?

You could also try remapping the alt key to another key with xkb, which you can do in the keyboard layout options. (I'm on my phone or I would give the exact title.)

I rather not want to do that. I want my Alt key the way I know it.

[vkareh]

It is an issue with the HUD, which I'm trying to fix. Do you use Compiz or Marco? Does it work on one and not the other?

[orschiro]

Thanks for attempting to fix it!

I am using Marco (Software compositor).

Shall I try Compiz for a little while?

[vkareh]

shouldn't hurt to try it, but I just checked on my latest build and it doesn't work with either Marco or Compiz... strangely, though, if I kill mate-hud and restart it, it works for Marco (but not for Compiz).

Just to check: does the HUD work for you from a clean restart?

[orschiro]

It does work from a clean restart but only for a little while. I cannot really tell what makes it stop exactly

[vkareh]

great, this is helpful - thanks! I'll keep working on a fix

[orschiro]

Glad I can help! Let me know if anything else.

[elcste]

I am going to test this. Which one doesn't have the HUD and which one does?

Contemporary, Cupertino and Mutiny have it, per the Alpha 2 announcement.

How do I do that?

Right click the three dots just to the left of the applet. (You can see it to the left of the Firefox in this image.) You may need to unlock it first.

[orschiro]

I almost believe my problem is a different one.

I tested the Redmond layout which does not use the HUD.

But even there, my Alt key stops working after a while.

But my Alt key is definitely not broken. I started xev and it returns an output when pressing Alt.

[orschiro]

Just made an interesting observation.

I can trigger the Alt + Tab behavior if I press the following keys in this order:

Shift + Alt + Tab

[vkareh]

@orschiro, if you run ps -fe | grep mate-hud, does it show mate-hud running with Redmond (or whenever Alt doesn't work for that matter)? Have you changed any other keybinding thatuses Alt?

[orschiro]

While running Contemporary:

orschiro@x230:~$ ps -fe | grep mate-hud
orschiro  1273  1113  0 09:40 ?        00:00:00 mate-hud
orschiro 27337 27313  0 14:40 pts/0    00:00:00 grep mate-hud

Directly after switching to Redmond:

orschiro@x230:~$ ps -fe | grep mate-hud
orschiro  1273  1113  0 09:40 ?        00:00:00 mate-hud
orschiro 27499 27313  0 14:42 pts/0    00:00:00 grep mate-hud

[vkareh]

Ha! That is extremely helpful! OK, we need to find a way to load and unload the mate-hud consistently. I have two things to work on: un/loading it, and fixing the Alt thing. I'll try to make some time today for this.

[orschiro]

Look forward to do more testing on this! Let me know when ready.

[elcste]

Tangentially, would it ever be possible to have the HUD without the global menu (even as a hidden option or something I have enable manually)? I use a single vertical panel, so I will never want the global menubar , but I love the idea of the HUD

[vkareh]

@elcste - yes, my main computer is currently running 17.04 with mate-hud, without the global menu, using the default Ubuntu MATE panel layout (with slight mods).

It's not a "clean" 17.04, as some of my core mate packages are compiled from source, but it shows that it's entirely possible

[Wimpy]

I'd be interested in the details of that setup ️

The current plan is to allow the Global Menu Dbus registrar to run independently of the Global Menu applet so that the HUD can run without requiring a global menu.

[vkareh]

@Wimpy - Doesn't mate-hud request the menu entries from the AppMenu registrar already using the session dbus?
I can't find the appmenu in my panel, even though I can see appmenu-qt and appmenu-indicator installed:

vkareh@lemu4:~ $ aptitude search ~imenu
i   appmenu-qt                                  - application menu for Qt                               
i   gir1.2-dbusmenu-glib-0.4                    - typelib file for libdbusmenu-glib4                    
i   gir1.2-mate-menu                            - GObject introspection data for the MATE menu specifica
i   indicator-appmenu                           - Indicator for application menus.                      
i   libdbusmenu-glib4                           - library for passing menus over DBus                   
i   libdbusmenu-gtk3-4                          - library for passing menus over DBus - GTK+ version    
i   libdbusmenu-gtk4                            - library for passing menus over DBus - GTK+ version    
i   libdbusmenu-qt2                             - Qt implementation of the DBusMenu protocol            
i   libgnome-menu-3-0                           - GNOME implementation of the freedesktop menu specifica
i   libmate-menu-dev                            - implementation of the freedesktop menu specification f
i A libmate-menu2                               - implementation of the freedesktop menu specification f
i   libmessaging-menu0                          - Messaging Menu - shared library                       
i   libtopmenu-client-gtk2-0                    - Topmenu GTK2 (shared library¸ client part)            
i   libtopmenu-client-gtk3-0                    - Topmenu GTK3 (shared library¸ client part)            
i   libtopmenu-server-gtk2-0                    - Topmenu GTK2 (shared library, server part)            
i   libtopmenu-server-gtk3-0                    - Topmenu GTK3 (shared library, server part)            
i A mate-applet-brisk-menu                      - Solus Project's Brisk Menu MATE Panel Applet          
i A mate-applet-topmenu                         - Topmenu applet for the MATE panel                     
i   mate-menu                                   - Advanced MATE menu                                    
i   mate-menus                                  - implementation of the freedesktop menu specification f
i A menu                                        - generates programs menu for all menu-aware application
i A menu-xdg                                    - freedesktop.org menu compliant window manager scripts 
i   python-mate-menu                            - implementation of the freedesktop menu specification f
i   topmenu-gtk-common                          - Topmenu GTK+ (common files)                           
i   topmenu-gtk2                                - Topmenu GTK+ (GTK2 module)                            
i   topmenu-gtk3                                - Topmenu GTK+ (GTK3 module)

One thing is sure, I don't have the global menu in my panel. Here's my layout file, the only changes from the Ubuntu MATE default layout are using the advanced menu, the weather applet and the dock applet, all on the top panel.

vkareh@lemu4:~ $ cat /usr/share/mate-panel/layouts/vkareh-tweak.layout 
[Toplevel top]
orientation=top
expand=true
size=24

[Toplevel bottom]
orientation=bottom
expand=true
size=24

[Object notificationarea]
locked=true
position=1024
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=NotificationAreaAppletFactory::NotificationArea
object-type=applet

[Object indicatorappletcomplete]
locked=true
position=1133
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=IndicatorAppletCompleteFactory::IndicatorAppletComplete
object-type=applet

[Object clockapplet]
locked=true
position=10
panel-right-stick=true
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=ClockAppletFactory::ClockApplet
object-type=applet

[Object shutdown]
action-type=shutdown
locked=true
position=0
panel-right-stick=true
toplevel-id=top
object-type=action

[Object showdesktopapplet]
locked=true
position=0
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=bottom
applet-iid=WnckletFactory::ShowDesktopApplet
object-type=applet

[Object windowlistapplet]
locked=true
position=20
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=bottom
applet-iid=WnckletFactory::WindowListApplet
object-type=applet

[Object workspaceswitcherapplet]
locked=true
position=10
panel-right-stick=true
toplevel-id=bottom
applet-iid=WnckletFactory::WorkspaceSwitcherApplet
object-type=applet

[Object trashapplet]
locked=true
position=0
panel-right-stick=true
toplevel-id=bottom
applet-iid=TrashAppletFactory::TrashApplet
object-type=applet

[Object mateweatherapplet]
locked=true
position=974
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=MateWeatherAppletFactory::MateWeatherApplet
object-type=applet

[Object matemenuapplet]
locked=true
position=0
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=MateMenuAppletFactory::MateMenuApplet
object-type=applet

[Object dockapplet]
locked=true
position=79
panel-right-stick=false
toplevel-id=top
applet-iid=DockAppletFactory::DockApplet
object-type=applet

I also have the following in my ~/.profile file:

if [ -n "$GTK_MODULES" ]; then                                                                      
  GTK_MODULES="$GTK_MODULES:unity-gtk-module"                                                       
else                                                                                                
  GTK_MODULES="unity-gtk-module"                                                                    
fi                                                                                                  
export GTK_MODULES                                                                                  
export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=1

I have a script to auto-run on start that kills mate-hud and restarts it. I'm also running the latest version of mate-hud, mate-settings-daemon and marco directly from github master branch.... This is all on 17.04.