Mark Straver Reporter
	Description • 9 years ago

This seems to be a legacy bug.

When entering input in text fields, you can use Alt-numberkeys to enter specific key codes for e.g. accented characters. This works fine when Numlock is on, and as-expected. But when numlock is off, the bahvior is really confused:
* Any Alt+character combination that has a shortcut key activates that shortcut (as expected), like Alt+leftarrow (4) or Alt+Home (7)
* Any Alt+character combination that doesn't have a shortcut key acts as-if Numlock is on. I think this is a bug and causes a lot of confusion.

The resulting effect is extremely inconsistent when Numlock is off:
e.g. Alt+0233 gives an accented character as-if Numlock is on (é)
e.g. Alt+0234 navigates the browser back when "4" is hit, instead of inputting (ê)

We should change the code so Firefox's keyboard handling treats the numpad properly according to its numlock state, instead of this mish-mash. This means when Numlock is off, it should never treat keypresses as number keys (like it does now), but rather their arrow/home/end/ins/del/pgup/pgdn control keys.

	Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(away 4/27 - 5/6)
	Comment 1 • 9 years ago

Key event handling depends on the platform, so, what are you using?

And could you post STR with specific keyboard layout?

	Mark Straver Reporter
	Comment 2 • 9 years ago

Windows 7 x64
en-US keyboard layout
Standard desktop keyboard (logitech), standard windows drivers.

STR:
1. Set numlock off
2. Focus a text input field in the browser
3. Attempt to input an extended character with alt code

if no shortcut is hit, it will accept the input as-if numlock is on (bug)
if a shortcut is hit, the shortcut is executed (correct)

	Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(away 4/27 - 5/6)
	Comment 3 • 9 years ago

> 3. Attempt to input an extended character with alt code

Could you explain the detail of this? I'm not familiar with US keyboard layout's special behavior (like inputting with Alt key).

	Mark Straver Reporter
	Comment 4 • 9 years ago

Really? I thought that would be common knowledge.

Press down and hold the Alt key, then input the character code with numbers, then let go of the Alt key. This is the standard way of accessing extended characters that are not part of the actual keyboard's directly-accessible layout.

	Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(away 4/27 - 5/6)
	Comment 5 • 9 years ago

(In reply to Mark Straver from comment #4)
> Really? I thought that would be common knowledge.
> 
> Press down and hold the Alt key, then input the character code with numbers,
> then let go of the Alt key.

Ah, I see what you are talking about. I misunderstood US keyboard layout can input a Unicode character with Alt key + a printable key.