Option to disable ^A

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Type text, occassionally hit old-fashioned position Ctrl & A together, and 
clobber partial word.
2. Become annoyed.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Just an "a"

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Android 3.0.1

Please provide any additional information below.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by belg4...@gmail.com on 29 Jun 2011 at 10:45

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Please please please fix this. It makes the keyboard nearly useless at decent 
typing speeds.

Original comment by belg4...@gmail.com on 26 Jul 2011 at 3:42

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The keyboard map editor would be a work-around for me, as I would swap Ctrl and 
Esc.

Original comment by belg4...@gmail.com on 31 Oct 2011 at 1:22

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For the specific Ctrl+A issue, I don't think there's much I can currently do 
about that without breaking it for the cases where people actually do want a 
Ctrl+A, the keyboard unfortunately can't read your mind to know what you 
intended. I agree that it can be annoying though.

I'm working on user-customizable key maps, but it's slow progress. Also, it be 
nice if it were possible to restrict the Ctrl/Esc keys only to specific 
applications such as ConnectBot and a VNC client, so that the keys would be 
available for other purposes in other applications.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 31 Oct 2011 at 1:36

• Changed state: Duplicate

[GoogleCodeExporter]

do about that without breaking it for the cases where people actually do
want a Ctrl+A, the keyboard unfortunately can't read your mind to know what
you intended. I agree that it can be annoying though.
Mindreading's not necessary, the original request was for a setting to flat
out disable the interpretwtion of ^A

Original comment by belg4...@gmail.com on 31 Oct 2011 at 1:55

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Understood, but that type of hack wouldn't really fit in with the way the code 
is currently structured. The same problem basically exists for any unintended 
combination of adjacent keys, and I think it doesn't really make sense to add a 
special case for Ctrl+A, but not for others such as Z+X or '+Enter.

I think it is better to provide the option of replacing the Ctrl key with a 
different one via customizable layouts.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 31 Oct 2011 at 2:09

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Reopening this bug, since Ctrl-A now triggers "Select all" on Android 3.0 
(Honeycomb) and later, and this can lead to lost text when the next keystroke 
replaces the selection.

A simple "Ignore Ctrl-A" option would do the job but seems ugly, I'd prefer to 
have something which doesn't require toggling an option in settings for the 
cases where you actually want that key combination, but I agree that the 
current behavior is unpleasant, especially with this Ctrl key placement.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 24 Jan 2012 at 12:56

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thank you so much, I would love to see this fixed!

Original comment by Brig...@gmail.com on 24 Jan 2012 at 2:06

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Yeah, it's very annoying have a complete long text being lost because ctrl+a.

If at least every time that you pressed ctrl+a the keyboard copied the text to 
the clipboard automatically, we could paste it again without losing everything.

Thank you.

Original comment by gbc...@gmail.com on 1 Apr 2012 at 5:51

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have run into this issue a couple of times using evernote.  Ctrl-a deletes 
all text in my note.  What about a long press to activate the ctrl and alt 
functions?

Original comment by palado1...@gmail.com on 12 Dec 2012 at 5:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sorry about the lost text, I'll raise priority on addressing this specifically. 
I had been hoping to do this alongside customizable keymaps, but due to extreme 
lack of time it's unclear when I'll get a chance to do so.

Auto-copying text to the clipboard would be unsafe, I think a common 
(intentional) use of Ctrl-A is to replace text with something previously copied 
to the clipboard, i.e. moving text between different text entry boxes. It would 
be unfriendly to clobber the clipboard content in that case.

Would an option to swap Ctrl and Esc in the current full 5-row layout work for 
you? Adding a long-press distinction or specifically disabling Ctrl-A would be 
more work and seems clunky. An undo (distinct from the clipboard) such as 
Ctrl-Z would be nice, but I'm unsure if that's feasible without support from 
the application receiving input.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 12 Dec 2012 at 9:09

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think that changing the ESC by the Ctrl should be fine, or better for most 
cases.

I agree with Klaus about the clipboard, didn't thought about that on first time.

Original comment by gbc...@gmail.com on 12 Dec 2012 at 11:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is constantly getting me. I have to ditch Hacker's keyboard for anything 
outside of connectbot.  Please consider any sort of stop-gap hackery that would 
allow ctrl-a to be disabled.  Selecting text and copy/paste are cases that the 
OS handles already anyway.

Original comment by jyoj...@gmail.com on 20 Dec 2012 at 3:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This happens to me 3/6 texts. Was a fix found?

Original comment by GarbageG...@gmail.com on 18 Aug 2013 at 3:53

[GoogleCodeExporter]

As one that actually uses "Select All" functionality of Ctrl-A (and want to 
continue to have "Select All" available), I've also often experienced the 
unwanted behavior of replacing all of my typed text. However...

I'd like to propose an alternate solution: Narrow the width of the "Ctrl" key 
and widen the gap next to the "A" key. Many physical PC keyboards do this with 
the "Caps Lock" key, the usual neighbor of the "A" key - at least in my 
experience. I'll be interested in hearing what others think about this.

Thanks 

Original comment by Herb.Eys...@gmail.com on 10 Oct 2013 at 4:30

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How can you tell if someone added it to my phone

Original comment by smileycr...@gmail.com on 22 Nov 2014 at 9:16

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I second #14 Herb's suggestion of narrowing the Ctrl key. 

I actually keep hitting h, ctrl, v, e instead of 'have' thus annoyingly pasting 
in huge wodges of text. I recognise as has been stated elsewhere that the 
ctrl-lock functionality is something that was added upon request and ought to 
stay but, much like the lowered region sometimes present on a physical keyboard 
key, a small gap could be executed easily, prettily and solve this issue also I 
think.

Original comment by SeanMand...@googlemail.com on 6 Jan 2015 at 9:19