Key rate limit

[Paul Vojta]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:20:03AM -0500, tsuraan wrote:
> > I am not sure but xset has a [r rate delay [rate]], would that be any help ?
> 
> I believe that's for the autorepeat rate, so the rate/delay tells X
> that once the key is held down for <delay> ms, it should start firing
> that key at <rate> events/s (my units might be wrong though).  That's
> sort of the inverse of the problem I have, which is that the keyboard
> seems to be sending a bunch of keypress events really quickly for a
> short period of time.


I have a possibly related problem.

Sometimes I get keystrokes occurring via autorepeat even when no keys are
pressed.  They stop when I hit any other key (even shift).

I've looked into it, and found out that the problem is that the keyboard
(or control chip) is not sending the "break" code until the next key is hit.
Then, since X apparently keeps track of which keys are pressed on its own,
I get the repeated keystrokes.

Is there a way of telling X to just use the autorepeat provided by the
hardware?

The hardware in my case is a Dell XPS M1330 laptop, purchased late 2007.
The problem most often occurs when I release two (or more) keys at very
close to the same time.  For example, I switch Control and CapsLock
(ctrl:swapcaps), and to exit a browser I hit Ctrl-W.  Since the keys are
so close to each other, I can just use two fingers on the same hand, and
by habit I do it quickly.  Then I move over to a terminal window and get
a bunch of w's coming out.

--Paul Vojta, vojta at math.berkeley.edu