New version, old problem

[rubem]

Hello,

Xara X still has a severe bug (since its CorelXara days) regarding the typing of diacritical marks with foreign keyboards. The diacritic itself always shows up twice before each accented character, and it may disappear from the character if you type fast. Also, to make the diacritics appear at all, you have to quit Xara X, open Regedit, set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XaraX\Version 3.0\Options\TextTool\UseDeadKeys to 0 and re-enter the program (not exactly an user-friendly procedure). If you don't do that, all diacritical marks will appear as question marks. Look at the attachment to see what I mean.

I've posted the problem to this forum before and contacted Xara several times in the last two years with no results. Does anybody know if Xara will ever address this bug?

Rubem

[rubem]

Hello,

Xara X still has a severe bug (since its CorelXara days) regarding the typing of diacritical marks with foreign keyboards. The diacritic itself always shows up twice before each accented character, and it may disappear from the character if you type fast. Also, to make the diacritics appear at all, you have to quit Xara X, open Regedit, set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XaraX\Version 3.0\Options\TextTool\UseDeadKeys to 0 and re-enter the program (not exactly an user-friendly procedure). If you don't do that, all diacritical marks will appear as question marks. Look at the attachment to see what I mean.

I've posted the problem to this forum before and contacted Xara several times in the last two years with no results. Does anybody know if Xara will ever address this bug?

Rubem

[rubem]

Hmmm... I'm wondering why there aren't any answers yet... Some possibilities are:

1) Nobody else has this problem so nobody cares.
2) Nobody else uses diacritical marks. (unlikely)
3) The guys at Xara know that they will never solve it so nobody cares anyway.

C'mon, Xara, please give us a good explanation!

[james_frost]

I think the problem is we don't actually understand the problem fully?

Is it a problem when typing alt-numpad combinations to produce accented characters? (yep they don't work) or something else?

(I think you're right in saying a lot of us don't use them very often!)

Cheers

James

[rubem]

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] Thanks for the response...

> How exactly are you typing those characters in?

Just typing! I'm using dead keys, not using Alt-Numpad. To be more specific, I'm using the Portuguese (Brazilian) ABNT2 keyboard layout, which is the Brazilian standard for many years now. Look below for the basic layout. Accented chars are produced using three keys, two of which do not exist in the standard 101-key US keyboard (highlighted in the picture). The other one is the umlaut which is over the "6".

I must say at this point that CorelXARA is the *only* application to my knowledge that has this problem. I assume that you should be using some kind of custom driver or keyboard engine.

Hope this helps!

[rubem]

Forgot the picture [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[james_frost]

I'm afraid I'm not a Xara representative myself - just interested in what was wrong to see if I could help.

I assume lots of other people must have similar keyboard layouts for other countries, and since this is a globally available product it really ought to cater for other layouts other than US/UK standards.

Just out of interest, is it the same under different OS's? You would like to think that to any windows application, the actual application should just get a character code back from the keyboard inputs and nothing else - it seems a bit strange that Xara does things differently.

Anyhow, best of luck with getting it fixed

James

[rubem]

> Just out of interest, is it the same under different OS's?

Both CorelXara and Xara X have identical (i.e. wrong) behavior under Win95, 98 & Me.

> I'm afraid I'm not a Xara representative myself

Nevertheless, I expect that some smart guy with Xara looks at this thread and comes up with an answer, this is a really annoying bug!

[xrenex]

Rubem,

Have you tried typing Crtl-deadletterkey + character?
For the last character of my first name I have to type: Ctrl-' e.
This works perfect with Xara X's default setting "UseDeadKeys=1".

BTW this problem occurs in Win9x.
In Win NT 4 Xara X behaves like all other programs.

[rubem]

> Have you tried typing Crtl-deadletterkey + character?

Thanks for the hint. Ctrl doesn't work, but the Alt key works partially. Unfortunately it works with only one of the dead keys (`´), but doesn't do any good to the other ones. And Ctrl or Alt are not the standard anyway. I still prefer to disable UseDeadKeys and edit the text manally until they correct this bug. Will they?

> BTW this problem occurs in Win9x. In Win NT 4 Xara X behaves like all other programs.

Didn't know that either... so the solution is probably very close! Come on, Xara, please take a look at this!