( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) sometimes written as ( ° °)

[mikavilpas]

Summary

I have a stroke for the so-called Lenny face, ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) defined as the stroke L-N or HR-PB. In some sessions, when I write that stroke, this face is printed out: ( ° °). The characters in the middle have been converted to space characters (I inspected them in Emacs to find this out).

Reproducing

Here is a stroke log of the stroke that fails:

2018-06-05 22:02:12,415 Stroke(HR-PB : ['H-', 'R-', '-P', '-B'])
2018-06-05 22:02:12,426 Translation(('HR-PB',) : "( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)")

It's unclear to me how exactly to reproduce this. I open Plover one day, then do my work and possibly put the computer to sleep for the night. At some point I find that the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) face is broken.

I can always fix the stroke by restarting Plover.

Plover Version

I'm running Plover from source, today I was testing #964
The sha is 2fbd465 .

System

Fedora Linux 24
Linux QFINL014 4.11.12-100.fc24.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jul 21 17:35:20 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I know this isn't much to go by, but if you have any ideas on what I should inspect or capture or tinker, I should be able to make time during my day.

[benoit-pierre]

Plover will dynamically patch the keyboard layout to add missing characters needed for output. So if another program does patch the layout (or its reset by the Xorg server) that could explain the issue (and why restarting fix it).

[mikavilpas]

Yes, that seems to be related. I am able to reproduce this now:

• start Plover, verify that the stroke works
• issue the command setxkb se to change the keyboard layout to Swedish
• now the stroke is broken
• changing back to Finnish with setxkbmap fi does not fix the issue

Do you think that the patching could be done more often? Or maybe even manually?

[DanLanglois]

Right now, in your dictionary, you have maybe this:

"HR-PB": "(° ʖ °)",

It might be worth trying a subtle change, like this:

"HR-PB": "(° {^}{} ʖ °)",

As an explanation, I'm thinking that Plover aside, sometimes the character I've just pressed isn't in the font I'm using (especially likely if it's a weird symbol). Often the program I'm using will then switch font to one that does have the symbol, and then leave me in that font. This is a bit strange, since it affects the subsequent characters I type.

And anyways, I have found, that a good workaround for occasional symbols with this problem is to type space, then move left, then type the symbol you want, then move right again.

[mikavilpas]

I just got this error with the ` character too. That is strange, because that is a stroke that is built in to the Plover theory.
It's not a huge issue though, I seem to be able to fix it by restarting Plover.

[DanLanglois]

'I just got this error'

Note, that actually, this is a bit unclear. Something didn't display as you expected? What did you expect, and what happened? I wouldn't be against a screenshot, here.

'that is a stroke that is built in to the Plover theory'

I think you are supposing that 'that is a stroke that is built in to the Plover theory' would contrast with my concept of 'isn't in the font I'm using (especially likely if it's a weird symbol)', but actually, I think it may be both, and meanwhile, I emphasize that 'built in to the Plover theory' doesn't actually parse for me. What do you mean? Bringing the concepts of a 'stroke' and of 'the Plover theory' into it, is perhaps, frustratingly, only to make things more unclear..

I mean sure, I know about strokes and dictionaries, from having used Plover for years, but you see, I respond by looking into my own current steno dictionary, and I do not find your "`" character at all.

Which, to be clear, I take to be this: U+0060 : GRAVE ACCENT -- "`".

By the way, it might be relevant, that we probably see this as a rather unusual character to be using, I have never had the occasion. I mean, I'm not saying 'don't use it', but just, I bet that it's possible this character isn't accommodated by all fonts. Seems relevant... it's relevant if what we have here is not directly a Plover issue at all.

Actually, I might start over and ask you this: did you see my previous suggestion? I mean, tell me it didn't work, fine, but I don't know if you saw it? I mean this suggestion:

--
Right now, in your dictionary, you have maybe this:

"HR-PB": "(° ʖ °)",

It might be worth trying a subtle change, like this:

"HR-PB": "(° {^}{} ʖ °)",

As an explanation, I'm thinking that Plover aside, sometimes the character I've just pressed isn't in the font I'm using (especially likely if it's a weird symbol). Often the program I'm using will then switch font to one that does have the symbol, and then leave me in that font. This is a bit strange, since it affects the subsequent characters I type.

And anyways, I have found, that a good workaround for occasional symbols with this problem is to type space, then move left, then type the symbol you want, then move right again.

[mikavilpas]

You're right! Unfortunately I forgot what happened to be honest. I will try out a few things the next time I notice this. Mostly I wanted to create an issue just so that this isn't totally forgotten.

What I meant was this stroke:

`:
   KH-FG

I am pretty sure that it wrote nothing when I tried it in this broken mode.

I saw your suggestion too. I can try that out then too.

[mikavilpas]

Hey, I just got the error again. I was able to try out your workaround, but unfortunately it made no change to the behavior I already saw.

For completeness, here is the stroke I used:

({^}{} ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[benoit-pierre]

Duplicate of #650.