A probable keyboard bug when using the # symbol to trigger snippets automatically
JarisGV > 2023-08-05 11:43
Hey guys.
Dear Lalonde. It's been quite some time since I last wrote here. But I've been facing a possible bug since I started using QAP - and I thought it was a Windows bug. I tried to solve it without success for long months. Today I stopped to deeply investigate the problem and as I noticed that this happens when I type a word followed by the # symbol, I decided to exit QAP and the keyboard bug did not reoccur.
What's the bug?
Suddenly the keyboard goes crazy all its functions are messed up and inverted, the number pad doesn't work, CAPSLOCK is in lower case mode and vice versa, the numbers at the top of the keyboard don't work (only the symbols). And things like if you press the ESC key the Taskbar Manager will open, if you click the CTRL key all open browser tabs will be listed and the cursor will start working selecting text if you change it from one position to another in the text. Also, the bug messes up everything on the machine. If you click on a shortcut icon on the taskbar, another instance of the application will open, even if it is already running, and you will not be able to delete anything using DEL or even the BACKSPACE key.
Where does the bug happen?
I started facing this bug using Windows 10 on a PC. Now I'm using a laptop and Windows 11. [I actually brought my portable QAP from the other machine].
How does the bug happen?
I created some snippets and assigned the hash symbol [#] and a name as trigger to write the code. For example, I created a 200 word Lorem Ipsum and triggered it with "lorem#" and a custom HTML boilerplate triggered with html#.
How is the bug fixed?
After many tests I found the solution to change keyboard behavior by pressing right SHIFT key + # symbol again.
Final considerations
I would like to report this issue for your review and as the bug is easy to create maybe you could test it and find a solution so we can continue triggering our snippets using the # symbol. By the way, I use it at the end of the word for the obvious reason that we often write words starting with # for hashtags. Another point is that the bug only occurs when the trigger is automatic. If I press the keyboard spacebar or Enter to run the snippet, everything behaves as expected. And as a final point, if there isn't some way to fix this problem and we have to trigger our snippets without autorun using # I'll understand.
Once again, thank you very much for your work.
Jaris GV
Brazil