Problem with keypad

I’m using openSUSE 12.1. The keypad (with numlock off) triggers codes different to those of the corresponding keys (outside the keypad). While I can understand why that would make sense, it causes a ton of problems in non-KDE apps.

  • in Chromium ctrl+pgup/pgdn doesn’t change tab
  • in Emacs lots of combinations with these keys won’t work
  • in most non-KDE apps shift is actually interpreted to override the numlock-off when used in combination with the keypad

Is there some way to setup the system so that the keypad keys actually send the exact same codes as the non-keypad equivalents?

Perhaps the wrong keyboard is set in your DE. In KDE you can see it at system-settings>Input Devices>Keyboard.

If that’s not it, more info would be necessary, such as what DE and version, what kbd type your system detects (Yast>Hardware Info is your friend here), what the command line xev utility reports when you press keys, any xmodmap customization, etc.

Oh yes, and also the obvious: did you test with another keyboard? Perhaps yours is defective.

Thank you for your comments.

To be clear, nothing is wrong with my keyboard nor my configuration. This is something you can replicate with any keyboard keypad in openSUSE 12.1. I actually did post a bug report when I first experienced this issue. The reply I got was,

as you can verify via xev Pgup/Pgdn/Home/End and
Kp-Pgup/Kp-Pgdn/Kp-Home/Kp-End deliver different keycodes. It’s up to the
application to handle these the same or just different. Reassigning to Werner,
since he’s our maintainer for emacs.

This is extremely annoying. Is it really a problem with all these apps? Maybe a problem with toolkits? I don’t know, what I know is that there’s no way this is going to be handled consistently and properly across all applications. For the record, in windows all works fine, even in Firefox or Chrome. It seems to me like the only sensible workaround would be to set these keys to trigger the keycodes of the corresponding keys outside the keypad. Therefore my question.

As you seem to have already discarded KDE settings, hwinfo and xev results are useless, you’re restricted to xmodmap then. You have some studying to do. Good luck.