Tim Hardy

I thought I was going mad the first time the Delete key stopped working in Eclipse. This evening (early morning) the Control and Alt keys stopped working.

A quick browse through the readme revealed that this is a known bug:

Key bindings stop working (GTK+ only)
When using Eclipse, most key bindings will stop working. The only way to make the keys start working again is to restart Eclipse. This problem occurs on Debian, using libgtk+2.0 (2.6.4-2 or later). The problem is that a focus issue exists in GTK+ 2.6.7 and earlier, for which SWT has a workaround. This workaround is incompatible with the fix in GTK+. SWT detects the GTK+ version on start-up and decides whether to enable the workaround. Debian backported the focus fix into their libgtk+2.0 (2.6.4-2) package. To workaround this problem, either get the Debian unstable version of GTK+, compile your own GTK+ or hack Shell.gtk_realize(int) and change the version it checks. Please see either Eclipse’s or GTK+’s bugzilla for more information.

Coming on top of a dying mouse that re-interprets single clicks as double clicks at the most inappropriate moments, I’m beginning to think that my machine hates me…

Still, while looking online to verify that I wasn’t going insane, I stumbled upon the following useful Javaworld article: Become an Eclipse Hotkey Showoff. My favourite is “Hippie Completion” - just for the name. Once I get the control keys working reliably on my keyboard again I’ll have to try it

This entry was posted on Friday, March 3rd, 2006 at 1:54 am and is filed under Programming, howto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.