Friday, April 29, 2011

dead key bug.

Hi, all. (Sorry for the long mail).

I'm having an issue typing dead keys since last year. The issue started when I
upgrade Vim from version 6 to version 7. In that time I started a thread here
but, since the problem was not solved, I rollback to using Vim 6 again.

I thought the problem could come from an installed plugin or another Vim
script. Last month I was able to completely format my notebook and start a new
installation. I installed Vim 7 without any of my plugins or scripts but the
problem persists. Even starting Vim with '-u NONE' command line option.

The issue with the dead keys is random. That is, sometimes it happens,
sometimes not. Is difficult to predict when it will happen. I work in a
Windows XP Professional machine using ISO-8859-1 character set (cp1252 on
Windows and cp850 in a MSDOS box) the official language is Brazilian
Portuguese and I use an US International keyboard layout. The last made test
was in a notebook with official language English (United States), also using
an US International keyboard layout. In that machine the cp1252 (ISO-8859-1)
is still used in Windows but MSDOS boxes use cp437 code page. The operating
system in this notebook is a Windows XP Home. This mail was written in a
MacBook with Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and Vim 7.3. In the MacBook the problem
doesn't happen.

The problem: sometimes the dead keys like ", ', `, ~ and ^ doesn't show up.
This happens when I type this keys followed by a space. This is the default way
to get the character it self. That is, if I want to put the letter a between
single quotes I need the following key sequence: quote+space+a+quote+space.

Sometimes the quote character is not processed by Vim. But the space character
is and Vim prints a blank space in the buffer. With should not be since the
key sequence quote+space should print a ' character. Although the quote
character is not processed it's still kept in the keyboard buffer because,
when the a key is pressed, Vim prints an a acute (á), which is the result of
the sequence quote+a. The same issue happens with the other keys mentioned
above.

Well, the problem happens only in the GUI version, not in the terminal
version. That is, this only happens in GVim, not in Vim. Also the issue
happens only when I'm typing in the buffer in INSERT mode. The problem doesn't
happen when typing in the command window or in NORMAL mode.

With this knowledge I started to read all documentation about changes made in
this version and stumbled upon the 'lmap', 'keymap', 'iminsert' and 'imsearch'
options. I read all the documentation found in the 'mbyte.txt' file and
started to think that could be something it this matter. I build my own
'accents.vim' file and put it in my $RUNTIMEPATH/keymap folder. The file is
strait forward since I only needed some keys. The important part of it is:

\"<Space> \"
'<Space> '
`<Space> `
~<Space> ~
^<Space> ^

I really thought this would solve the problem but, don't. The problem
persists. Sometimes the key sequence works, sometimes don't. That's why I
think there is a Vim bug within this matter.

What I really need this time is some thoughts about how to debug Vim in a
Windows XP environment. How to download the Vim sources and what kind of debug
to use, cdb or gdb. And, if possible, in what files should I start search.

Regards,

Alessandro

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