Problems with Word and keyboard layouts

[Nick Collingridge]

I have been experiencing a problem recently with keyboard layouts
automagically (and incredibly annoyingly) switching back to a standard Apple
layout from my keyboard's layout, which is the one for a Logitech UK
keyboard. I have tried all manner of ways of fixing this problem, but the
only way I have been able to resolve it so far is to use a fix which has
been posted in a number of places - basically to remove the file named
Roman.bundle in /System->Library->Keyboard Layouts.

This has worked fine in all situations except one, which is with Word
(v11.1-040910). The problem is that since removing the Roman.bundle layout
file, Word has started crashing on a pretty regular basis when any documents
are open. This has led me to conclude that the original problem with the
keyboard layouts changing may also be attributable to Word - for some reason
it seems like Word may be changing the keyboard layout back to a standard
Apple layout behind the back of the OS, and if the layout file is not there
it just seems to crash. Speculation, maybe, but the circumstantial evidence
seems to point in this direction as Word has always been pretty stable
before. Not rock solid like most other apps, maybe, but certainly a crash
was a rare occurrence before this started happening, and it did coincide
with my resolution to the keyboard layout problem.

So it looks like I am faced with a quandary. Either I put the keyboard
layout file back and lose control of which keyboard layout is used, or I
have to put up with Word crashing regularly. Your comments please!

 

[matt neuburg]

I have been experiencing a problem recently with keyboard layouts
automagically (and incredibly annoyingly) switching back to a standard Apple
layout from my keyboard's layout, which is the one for a Logitech UK
keyboard. I have tried all manner of ways of fixing this problem, but the
only way I have been able to resolve it so far is to use a fix which has
been posted in a number of places - basically to remove the file named
Roman.bundle in /System->Library->Keyboard Layouts.

This has worked fine in all situations except one, which is with Word
(v11.1-040910). The problem is that since removing the Roman.bundle layout
file, Word has started crashing on a pretty regular basis when any documents
are open. This has led me to conclude that the original problem with the
keyboard layouts changing may also be attributable to Word - for some reason
it seems like Word may be changing the keyboard layout back to a standard
Apple layout behind the back of the OS, and if the layout file is not there
it just seems to crash. Speculation, maybe, but the circumstantial evidence
seems to point in this direction as Word has always been pretty stable
before. Not rock solid like most other apps, maybe, but certainly a crash
was a rare occurrence before this started happening, and it did coincide
with my resolution to the keyboard layout problem.

So it looks like I am faced with a quandary. Either I put the keyboard
layout file back and lose control of which keyboard layout is used, or I
have to put up with Word crashing regularly. Your comments please!

I'll be interested to hear what you discover. Messing with anything is
/System/Library is a really bad idea (there's a reason why it belongs to
root, not to you). But the notion that your keyboard layout would refuse
to stay where you put it is also really annoying. I suppose you've tried
toggling the input source options in the Input Menu pane of
International preferences? Have you disabled the "previous/next input
source" keyboard shortcuts so you don't strike them accidentally (all
too easy to do). If none of these work, it sounds like the system or
some program is trying to be "helpful" and match your keyboard layout to
a particular language or font. There was a way to toggle that behavior
in Panther (though I'm not sure what it really did), but I don't know
how to do it in Tiger... Anyway it doesn't sound like a Word problem.
Word has a right to expect all the pieces of the system to be present.
You could check the crash logs to see if there's any information that
could help you, though. m.

 

[Nick Collingridge]

I'm not the only person who has experienced this problem. There is a tip in
Macosxhints that refers to the problem, amongst other places. I, and others,
have tried many ways of resolving the problem (including the suggestions
that you make) without success. This is the only resolution that has worked
so far.

One thing that bugs me about your reply is that you suggest the problem lies
with me removing the non-valid Apple keyboard layout file, rather than with
Word. No other app crashes at all, and there is no question that there is a
valid keyboard layout file there - it's just that it's the Logitech one
rather than an Apple supplied one. Why should Word REQUIRE an Apple keyboard
layout file? More to the point, why should it CRASH when it doesn't find
one? This must be sloppy programming at the very least.

Word certainly has a right to expect all pieces of the system to be present,
including a keyboard mapping file, but there IS a valid keyboard mapping
file here. Every other application works fine with it. The whole point of
having a system which uses a keyboard layout file to define keyboard layouts
is that the system can support various keyboards with different layouts. It
doesn't make sense that Word should have a problem with that.

 

[matt neuburg]

One thing that bugs me about your reply is that you suggest the problem lies
with me removing the non-valid Apple keyboard layout file, rather than with
Word

My answer was, if anything, sympathic and eager to learn ("I'll be
interesting to hear what you discover" is the first thing I said). I am
in the language business, and I write technical stuff about how Word
deals with languages and keyboard layouts and such, so I am hoping to
learn from your experience.

Your original note was open-ended. You know you've got a problem and you
know exactly what it is; you describe your own "quandary" perfectly.
Obviously no one here is going to solve this quandary; it *is* a
quandary. You simply said "Your comments please", and I provided some
comments, highly miscellaneous and not expecting any of them to be much
use. You've got a problem, that's for sure. Is your sudden anger because
I didn't say "Awww, ickle-pritty got a boo-boo?" Then just pretend that
I said it and let's move on.

It seems to me, however, that you've misread what I said - perhaps
willfully. I don't know you, I don't care what you do to your computer,
and I don't think what you do to your computer has any moral component
whatever. And it is certainly the case that if Word can't handle the
user messing with the contents of /System/Library, that is annoying
(though not terribly surprising, considering how fragile Word is over
things that the user *can* legally mess with, such as fonts, and things
that can easily go wrong, such as permissions). And it is especially
annoying to you, obviously, since you are backed into taking this course
by a system-level bug, so you feel you have no choice.

But what I did say is still also true: /System/Library is officially out
of bounds, and Word, and other applications, have some right to expect
that a certain default state will inhere there. Doing things to
/System/Library can break things. Lots of things. Easily. The fact that
both you and Word have some claim on what goes on in /System/Library is
*why* this makes for a quandary.

m.

 

[Nick Collingridge]

I¹m sorry if you interpreted my use of the word bug as an attack on you ­ it
wasn¹t intended that way. I still stand by my comments though ­ I really
don¹t think that Word should be coded to depend on a specific keyboard
layout file, particularly when it is clearly possible (as in my case) that
this keyboard layout is totally invalid for a particular keyboard. I¹m not
the only one who has a Logitech UK keyboard, and Word shouldn¹t barf when I
try and use one with the correct mapping. In my view this is a clear bug,
whether or not it is triggered by moving something that is in a privileged
folder.

 

[Tom Gewecke]

I¹m not
the only one who has a Logitech UK keyboard, and Word shouldn¹t barf when I
try and use one with the correct mapping. In my view this is a clear bug,
whether or not it is triggered by moving something that is in a privileged
folder.

The bug is really with 10.4, which should allow users to select the
Logitech layout (or any other one) and have it stick without users
having to mess with anything in /system. Badly unstable keyboard
preferences is a known issue with Tiger which has not yet been fixed as
far as I can tell.

 

[Nick Collingridge]

The bug I am referring to is Word crashing when I use a valid keyboard
layout file (but not an original Apple one) with it. There may be and
probably is a bug with 10.4 and its handling of keyboard layouts, but if
every other app copes with the fix that I have used (on the recommendations
of others), then Word surely should do as well without crashing.

 

[Tom Gewecke]

The bug I am referring to is Word crashing when I use a valid keyboard
layout file (but not an original Apple one) with it. There may be and
probably is a bug with 10.4 and its handling of keyboard layouts, but if
every other app copes with the fix that I have used (on the recommendations
of others), then Word surely should do as well without crashing.

My own perspective is the other way around: I would personally not
expect any app to work right after I modified /system like that, and
consider it pure luck if it did. I put the blame 100% on Apple for
this one, since users should not have to fool with /system to get their
chosen layout to work reliably with any app. This is actually the only
case I can think of where I don't put all the blame on MS for Word's
problems

 

[Nick Collingridge]

I could agree with this if I were modifying a file that contained code on
which the OS depended, but a keyboard mapping file is simply a file which
maps keys to the appropriate characters or keystrokes. The only way that I
can imagine that an application could be dependant on this and crash in this
way would be if it is hard-coded to look for a specific file and then simply
crashes when it doesn't find it. That is at the very least poor coding -
surely there should be error trapping for a problem like that.

This is not a library we're talking about which contains executable code
that the application depends upon, but simply a file which essentially
contains a lookup table. The keyboard mapping files exist so that you can
use different keyboard layouts with the OS, which is what I am doing. Why
should Word crash when I do so?

 

[Tom Gewecke]

If Apple would fix *its* bug in one of the updates that come out every
month or two, I think the whole issue would probably be moot.

Certainly the more resiliant the code of an app is to unexpected
situations the better. But in general it seems quite reasonable to me
that a developer should be able to assume that /system is intact and not
be required to test his code for every case where someone might remove a
piece of it, roman.bundle or something else. Of course an app must be
able to correctly handle additional, custom kb layouts put in /Library
and /Users as well. If Word can't do that, it is a major bug.