Accidental Caps Lock Defense in Snow Leopard: Fails with input methods

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
October 15th, 2009 • 9:49 am

Ah, that is why I keep getting e-mails from people telling me that they cannot reproduce the problem on their machine…

See, I am a heavy Spell Catcher X user. I totally depend on it for my writing work, which is something like 90% of my work.

But… until now, Spell Catcher X has been operating as an input method under Mac OS X. (This will change with the 64-bit version for Snow Leopard.)

This is still true for the current version of Spell Catcher X, which is compatible with Snow Leopard as long as you run the applications where you want to use it in 32-bit mode, but, being a 32-bit tool, it simply does not work in applications running in 64-bit. The input method option is greyed out in the input menu, and Mac OS X reverts to the underlying keyboard layout (Canadian CSA in my case) when switching to 64-bit applications. (It gracefully switches back to the Spell Catcher input method when switching back to 32-bit applications where the input method is used.)

The problem, however, is that, under Snow Leopard, for some reason the Accidental Caps Lock Defense (i.e. the slight delay before pressing on the Caps Lock key is registered) does not work when using an input method. You can try it yourself even if you don’t have Spell Catcher. Just go to the “Input Sources” tab in the “Language & Text” (formerly “International”) preference pane in System Preferences, and activate one of the available input methods included in Snow Leopard, such as the “Chinese – Traditional” one.

Then select that input method in the input menu, and try using the Caps Lock key. Caps Lock will come on at the slightest brush of the key, without the built-in “defense” that should delay the activation of the mode. This will also affect input methods used in 64-bit applications, not just in 32-bit applications, so it has nothing to do with 64-bit vs. 32-bit, contrary to what I wrote yesterday.

So that’s what’s been happening to me in Snow Leopard. I have been using the Spell Catcher input method, and because it’s an input method, the Accidental Caps Lock Defense does not work.

Since it affects not just Spell Catcher X but also other input methods, it’s clearly a bug in Snow Leopard itself, and not in Spell Catcher. But it’s a bug that only affects users of input methods, which are obviously a very small minority of Betalogue readers. (I don’t know if I have many Asian readers. If I do, then they might be able to confirm this.)

Now, if I had more time to devote to all this (as opposed to trying to carve some time out of my heavy daily workload), I probably would have been able to investigate this properly before posting anything about it on this blog. Instead, I have been posting message after message about this, and it’s only now that we finally seem to have isolated the actual set of circumstances that triggers the buggy behaviour (Snow Leopard + input methods).

The good news is that I haven’t got around to submitting a bug report to Apple about this yet. So I can do this now without having to correct an existing bug report that would probably have been filed under “unable to reproduce” by Apple’s staff.

Unless of course I am still missing a piece of the puzzle. But I don’t think I am. I can definitely reproduce the problem in a brand new user environment, just but selecting an input method in the input menu and trying to use the Caps Lock key. There is no delay whatsoever.

Accidental Caps Lock Defense in Snow Leopard: It’s the input methods

Ah, that is why I keep getting e-mails from people telling me that they cannot reproduce the problem on their machine…

See, I am a heavy Spell Catcher X user. I totally depend on it for my writing work, which is something like 90% of my work.

But… until now, Spell Catcher X has been operating as an input method under Mac OS X. (This will change with the 64-bit version for Snow Leopard.)

This is still true for the current version of Spell Catcher X, which is compatible with Snow Leopard as long as you run the applications where you want to use it in 32-bit mode, but, being a 32-bit tool, it simply does not work in applications running in 64-bit. The input method option is greyed out in the input menu, and Mac OS X reverts to the underlying keyboard layout (Canadian CSA in my case) when switching to 64-bit applications. (It gracefully switches back to the Spell Catcher input method when switching back to 32-bit applications where the input method is used.)

The problem, however, is that, under Snow Leopard, for some reason the Accidental Caps Lock Defense (i.e. the slight delay before pressing on the Caps Lock key is registered) does not work when using an input method. You can try it yourself even if you don’t have Spell Catcher. Just go to the “Input Sources” tab in the “Language & Text” (formerly “International”) preference pane in System Preferences, and activate one of the available input methods included in Snow Leopard, such as the “Chinese – Traditional” one.

Then select that input method in the input menu, and try using the Caps Lock key. Caps Lock will come on at the slightest brush of the key, without the built-in “defense” that should. This will also affect input methods used in 64-bit applications, not just in 32-bit applications, so it has nothing to do with 64-bit vs. 32-bit, contrary to what I wrote yesterday.

So that’s what’s been happening to me in Snow Leopard. I have been using the Spell Catcher input method, and because it’s an input method, the Accidental Caps Lock Defense does not work.

Since it affects not just Spell Catcher X but also other input methods, it’s clearly a bug in Snow Leopard itself, and not in Spell Catcher. But it’s a bug that only affects users of input methods, which are obviously a very small minority of Betalogue readers. (I don’t know if I have many Asian readers. If I do, then they might be able to confirm this.)

Now, if I had more time to devote to all this (as opposed to trying to carve some time out of my heavy daily workload), I probably would have been able to investigate this properly before posting anything about it on this blog. Instead, I have been posting message after message about this, getting contradictory feedback from readers, and it’s only now that we finally seem to have isolated the actual set of circumstances that triggers the buggy behaviour (Snow Leopard + input methods).

The good news is that I haven’t got around to submitting a bug report to Apple about this yet. So I can do this now without having to correct an existing bug report that would probably have been filed under “unable to reproduce” by Apple’s staff.

Unless of course I am still missing a piece of the puzzle. But I don’t think I am. I can definitely reproduce the problem in a brand new user environment, just but selecting an input method in the input menu and trying to use the Caps Lock key. There is no delay whatsoever.


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