CONFIRMED problem with Entourage changing Keyboard Layout -UPDATED

[Nick Collingridge]

I (along with many other people) have been suffering from a problem with
keyboard layouts being changed without any user intervention for a long time
now (many months). The symptoms are as follows:

I have a Logitech keyboard and have the keyboard layout installed for it.
The appropriate layout for me is "Logitech UK Intl". However from time to
time this layout gets switched without my intervention to the standard UK
(British) layout. This is INTENSELY annoying as all of a sudden some of the
keys start producing the wrong characters (particularly the @ key suddenly
becomes the " key). There is no warning at all - it just changes and the
only way I discover it's changed is when I type one of the changed keys and
get a character other than the one I expected.

I know that this also happens with other localised keyboard layouts from
reports from other sufferers that I have seen on the web.

The only remedy that I've discovered up to now is to remove the Roman.bundle
layout file from the appropriate folder in the System folder, but this makes
Word become very unstable, so I've reverted to the standard OS default of
this file being installed.

I have been berated in the past for accusing Microsoft products of causing
this change, but up to now I've never been able to "catch one in the act",
so to speak. However I have now definitively found a case where this happens
with Entourage, as follows:

Open the Accounts dialog, and click on the New button - the keyboard layout
INSTANTLY changes to British - no question about it, Entourage is DEFINITELY
guilty as charged. Why does this happen? I guess this HAS to be a bug in the
code.

Now try and deny that this is a problem caused by Microsoft!!!

MICROSOFT MACBU - PLEASE FIX THIS - IT IS DRIVING ME (AND MANY OTHERS) MAD!!

ALSO - PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE AWARE OF THIS ISSUE!

This is the first definitive proof of a categorical cause for the problem.
It is very difficult to pin this one down as there is nothing in any log to
indicate that the keyboard layout has been changed, and no clues anywhere
about why it has happened. The only way of tracking the guilty app down is
to notice that the keyboard layout has changed by having the active layout
displayed in the menu bar and then noticing that it has changed at the exact
time that it does change...

MacOS X 10.4.3, Entourage 11.2.1

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Probably totally irrelevant--but worth trying since you don't mention it: I
used to notice (Panther 10.3.9, nothing extra with regards to keyboards)
that my keyboard layout changed occasionally, independently of me. There is
actually a preference for "try to match keyboard with text", which seems to
reduce this problem for me (System Preferences, International, Input Menu,
click on Options). Have you tried making sure that is unchecked? (mine may
have been checked by default, I'm not sure)

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Probably totally irrelevant--but worth trying since you don't mention it: I
used to notice (Panther 10.3.9, nothing extra with regards to keyboards)
that my keyboard layout changed occasionally, independently of me. There is
actually a preference for "try to match keyboard with text", which seems to
reduce this problem for me (System Preferences, International, Input Menu,
click on Options). Have you tried making sure that is unchecked? (mine may
have been checked by default, I'm not sure)

10.3.x also had a known bug where the system would revert to the default
keyboard layout for the language youinstalled the system in originally
at every restart (eg: you install the system in French and use a US
keyboard layout: at every restart, the layout would revert back to
French). 10.3 was rather buggy as far as keyboard lyout selection went.
It was corrected in 10.4.0.


Corentin

 

[Nick Collingridge]

Thanks for both responses, but as you can see from my original post I am
running 10.4.3. Also, I think the option mentioned by Daiya Mitchell is now
called "Allow a different input source for each document" in 10.4, and I
don't have this selected - the option I have selected is "Use one input
source in all documents". Despite this, Microsoft applications seem to feel
that they know better than me which input source I want to use.

Still no response at all from Microsoft on this one!

Nick