Some GTK+3 events are not emitted when using a touchpad (but are with a mouse)

Can you give an example/screenshot? I've never had this issue.

I've seen this behavior in all GTK+3 apps recently.

On my computer it happens only with menus from the top panel (i.e. application and notification menus) but not with right click menus.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 updated today.

It also happens in right click menus for GTK 3 applications, here.

Confirm. The same problem here.
Some additional description and couple screenshots available in the attachments for bug #950823

Confirm, same problem here. Happens with panel menu and right click menu in GTK apps.

I also noticed in addition to no highlight, hovering over a menu item that has a submenu, the submenu doesn't open until I click it.

Seeing the same problems on an HP dv6 laptop running 12.04 x64.

I filed bug 949029 earlier and found that this happens only when touchpad is being used, is the issue you are experiencing the same one?

Confirm, same problem here, HP Mini and IBM Thinkpad R 60

Also I see the original reporter says this happens with global menu disabled. Its happening for me with them enabled.

Plugged in a usb mouse to test, and as others said it works fine with the mouse. With my touchpad I do experience this bug (elantech touchpad on an ASUS u52f)

Having the same problem on an Alienware M11x with Bumblebee drivers.

I can confirm this. It works fine with my USB mouse, but nicely reproduces with the touchpad. Chris, could you please have a look there? It might be something synaptics specific, or touchpads report the events differently so that GTK needs an update.

This is very hardware specific - no issue here on Dell w/ synaptics touchpad, nvidia

@mc3man: I can see this behaviour on at leat two laptops. One is a Sony Viao VPCCW2S1E, the other an Acer Aspire 3830T.

On the sony laptop, cat /pruc/bus/input/devices gives me :

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0007 Version=01b1
N: Name="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input12
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event12
B: PROP=9
B: EV=b
B: KEY=6420 30000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800011000003

Here's some more details on my laptop that's effected by the issue if that helps:

Asus U52f, intel ironlake graphics. Its an elantech touchpad (which uses the synaptics driver)

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=000e Version=0000
N: Name="ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio4/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio4/input/input5
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse0 event5
B: PROP=8
B: EV=b
B: KEY=e420 30000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800011000003

What is strange is that gtk+ v2 applications' widgets (including buttons and menus) are working correctly (tested on firefox (gtk2/xul), liferea, thewidgetfactory). Xev reports the same events for mouse and touchpad.

I was able to reproduce this on Acer Aspire One A150, Lenovo E420 and EMachines E732G touchpads (all synaptics).

It is also interesting that nautilus continues highlighting the folders and files when touchpad is used to move the mouse across the file list, however the widgets in the bar do not react.

Sometimes in order to trigger this issue one needs to click with touchpad somewhere first, the menus react properly when you start using mouse then swich to touchpad until the first click.

The attached video shows that once the mouse click is being performed in the window using the touchpad, the widget no longer receives "enter" events, therefore it does not know that it needs to react.

My xinput is
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Bluetooth Mouse V1 id=13 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Integrated Camera id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]

touchpad info is
$ xinput list-props 10
Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
 Device Enabled (132): 1
 Coordinate Transformation Matrix (134): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
 Device Accel Profile (254): 1
 Device Accel Constant Deceleration (255): 2.500000
 Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (256): 1.000000
 Device Accel Velocity Scaling (257): 12.500000
 Synaptics Edges (258): 1771, 5453, 1653, 4667
 Synaptics Finger (259): 25, 30, 256
 Synaptics Tap Time (260): 180
 Synaptics Tap Move (261): 243
 Synaptics Tap Durations (262): 180, 180, 100
 Synaptics ClickPad (263): 0
 Synaptics Tap FastTap (264): 0
 Synaptics Middle Button Timeout (265): 75
 Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure (266): 282
 Synaptics Two-Finger Width (267): 7
 Synaptics Scrolling Distance (268): 110, 110
 Synaptics Edge Scrolling (269): 1, 0, 0
 Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling (270): 0, 0
 Synaptics Move Speed (271): 1.000000, 1.750000, 0.036160, 40.000000
 Synaptics Edge Motion Pressure (272): 30, 160
 Synaptics Edge Motion Speed (273): 1, 442
 Synaptics Edge Motion Always (274): 0
 Synaptics Off (275): 1
 Synaptics Locked Drags (276): 0
 Synaptics Locked Drags Timeout (277): 5000
 Synaptics Tap Action (278): 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
 Synaptics Click Action (279): 1, 1, 0
 Synaptics Circular Scrolling (280): 0
 Synaptics Circular Scrolling Distance (281): 0.100000
 Synaptics Circular Scrolling Trigger (282): 0
 Synaptics Circular Pad (283): 0
 Synaptics Palm Detection (284): 0
 Synaptics Palm Dimensions (285): 10, 200
 Synaptics Coasting Speed (286): 20.000000, 50.000000
 Synaptics Pressure Motion (287): ... of unknown type CARDINAL

 Synaptics Pressure Motion Factor (288): 1.000000, 1.000000
 Synaptics Resolution Detect (289): 1
 Synaptics Grab Event Device (290): 1
 Synaptics Gestures (291): 1
 Synaptics Capabilities (292): 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
 Synaptics Pad Resolution (293): 84, 51
 Synaptics Area (294): 0, 0, 0, 0
 Synaptics Soft Button Areas (295): 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
 Synaptics Noise Cancellation (296): 8, 8
 Device Product ID (249): 2, 7
...

@Roman Yepishev (rye)

Exact same thing here. When I first login, if I just click on a panel menu first (like the power cog), items are highlighted fine. As soon as I click somewhere else though (like clicking a menu item from the cog menu, or clicking something in firefox) the bug manifests itself and I no longer get selections in gtk3 menus. It does work fine here in gtk2 apps as you described, no problems with firefox menus.

And if we add the code to track leave events we can see that they are still being sent, even when enter events are not.

When clicked using the couchpad, the button is sent a click event on button press and 2 leave events on release, when clicked with trackpoint or mouse, only button click event is sent.

it's a gtk issue, not really something for Chris I think, I've started discussing it upstream and opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=672009

Confirmed with unity 5.6.0-0ubuntu1

I only lose the highlight with the touchpad, not when using a mouse. And it only happens after I've had the Dash or the HUD open. Then navigating menus using the touchpad lacks all highlighting. To fix it, I just use the mouse instead, and it works for the touchpad too after that. At least till I open the Dash or HUD again.

Sorry about all that confusion ^^^

This bug definitely has nothing to do with Unity.

After login it initially allows to highlight all entries in indicator menus (e.g. system-settins, date & time).
When opening nautilus the ability to highlight vanished in all menus (except within firefox).

> [...] except within firefox

of course, this bug only affects gtk+3

My work computer running an nvidia Geforce Go 7600 with the Proprietary drivers does not have this issue, but my personal laptop with a radeon HD 4200 does have this issue with both the open sourced and fglrx drivers.

As 951121 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug, it's probably worth mentioning here that a related problem is that touchpad users cannot grab overlay scrollbars. I can neither see the menu highlights nor grab scrollbar thumbs on my Acer1410 using the touchpad, but can see them and grab them with a wireless USB mouse.

It seems I'm unable to reproduce this on current precise. I most certainly did get this bug a few days ago. Can someone else confirm this?

Yes, it's still a problem with the latest precise, updated today.

The upstream bug got a proposed patch: http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=210066

I was going to test it, but as I can't reproduce the original bug any more that wouldn't help much. Perhaps someone who still gets this could build GTK with that patch and check if it helps?

Thanks!

The bug certainly is still there.

I've uploaded a test package with the upstream patch to: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/+archive/ppa/

it needs to build so the binaries should be available in ~1 hour, testing would be appreciate then

Note that I believe that will not be enough since the patch only change menus, that will not fix overlay scrollbars or cairo dock which have been mentioned in the duplicates

I'm now using this new version of GTK3 and I still have the same bug (with the menu and other apps that have to be notified when the pointer is above its window).

Now, when I open a menu, the first entry is selected even if the mouse is not above this entry.

Just tried Seb's GTK3, and it didn't change menu behavior for me, but now the *first* time I use an overlay scrollbar in an app, it works fine. Subsequent attempts to use that same overlay scrollbar have this bug again.

@Michael Terry (mterry) Thats the same behavior I get without the patch (lets me use the overlay scrollbar once, then stops working) Same thing with the menus for me, when I first log in the menu highlights work fine. As soon as I click something thats when they stop working.

Ah, OK. I must have just never noticed it working the first time for me before. Then I guess the patch doesn't change anything for me.

This is supposedly fixed now, but I haven't had the chance to test it (I'm not good with git or compiling)

"Should be fixed in
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/commit/?id=bd55519f7e6bb5da2fdf6f5e99bd79213059f81b

At lest it works with my magic trackpad now where before it didn't."
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=672009#c11

I confirm this patch fixes this bug (at least for Benjamin Otte (Redhat) and me :) ).

If you want to test this patch, a version of this gtk+3-0 package is currently being built on my ppa:matttbe/ppa

I've registered a merge proposal: https://code.launchpad.net/~matttbe/gtk/949414/+merge/98353 (in order to merge this branch lp:~matttbe/gtk/949414 with lp:~ubuntu-desktop/gtk/ubuntugtk3 but I don't know where I've to push this branch because it seems lp:ubuntu/gtk+3.0 is not up to date :-/ )

This is why I also propose a debdiff to quickly upload this bug (@Ubuntu devs: I hope it's easier for you ; I don't want to give you more work ;) )

Matthieu, I just installed your fixed package and this indeed fixes the problem. Great, this was one annoying bug.

The patched packages from matttbe's ppa solved this problem on my synaptics touchpad.

This bug was fixed in the package gtk+3.0 - 3.3.18-0ubuntu4

---------------
gtk+3.0 (3.3.18-0ubuntu4) precise; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/git_touchpad_like_mouse.patch:
    - git patch, a touchpad device should behave like a mouse and not like a
       touchscreen (lp: #949414)
 -- Matthieu Baerts (matttbe) <email address hidden> Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:28:45 +0100

Note, this is not entirely fixed. The overlay scrollbar still does not work correctly with the touchpad. Or should that be tracked in another bug?

@greg: no problem for me.
Did you restart it? (I think the easier way is to restart your session)

As far as the scrollbar this bug was duped here but not really the same issue & still exists, noting again it affects both touchpads & mice
Bug 951121

This fix seems to have come through in today's precise updates. After logging out my menus and overlay scrollbars are working perfectly.

fixed for me too, tks

Matthieu, of course I started a new session! The overlay disappears after the first click on it, but only when I use the touchpad, mouse is fine. Dragging the overlay still works, though.

I am having the same problem as greg-chown. Should we open a new bug report?

@Greg. I do notice that here as well. Its fixed for the most part, now I can hover and drag the overlay scrollbar fine, but as you said left clicking once it, it does cause it to disappear. Works fine with a mouse here as well, only the touchpad is effected.

@greg I can confirm that after a click the overlay disappear while dragging is ok
There is a new bug that track this?

just to provide a feedback, last update of overlay-scrollbar package fixed the overlay disappear after a click problem

@Giovanni Mellini (merlos), yep that is fixed here for me as well

This problem still exists with menus in libgtk-3-0 3.4.0-0ubuntu1, so I reported bug 969076.