Ctrl-. displays e and changes input

Question

I'm running xubuntu 21.10 and have a weird problem I can't work out. If I press ctrl-. it displays the character e. If I then press enter or esc then it disappears. Until I've pressed enter or esc I can't type in other windows but can in the current window. If I type something and then press enter the text I've typed remains.

This happens in any application as far as I can tell (tested on a terminal, vscode, firefox). It also happens no matter whether I'm using my built in laptop keyboard on an external keyboard.

Things I've tried:

Running showkey -a and then pressing ctrl-.

$ showkey -a

Press any keys - Ctrl-D will terminate this program

e

This seems weird as if I press ctrl-c I get

$ showkey -a

Press any keys - Ctrl-D will terminate this program

^C    3 0003 0x03

So it seems like ctrl-. is doing something to stop input.

Running xev and then pressing ctrl-.

    state 0x0, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x6600001,
    root 0x7c2, subw 0x0, time 39184207, (-115,222), root:(756,757),
    state 0x4, keycode 60 (keysym 0x2e, period), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (2e) "."
    XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (2e) "."
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x6600001,
    root 0x7c2, subw 0x0, time 39184304, (-115,222), root:(756,757),
    state 0x4, keycode 60 (keysym 0x2e, period), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (2e) "."
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x6600001,
    root 0x7c2, subw 0x0, time 39184808, (-115,222), root:(756,757),
    state 0x4, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

It's very annoying as I'd like to use the ctrl-. keybaord shortcut in vscode. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The simplest solution would be to set the correct settings from the Gnome settings menu. If you still have this problem, you might want to also set the Regional Settings (System Settings => Language and Region) to whatever you prefer as well.

But, I would like to ask if you can try and use the same laptop in a different OS, if that's feasible. It could be a OS issue.

you can just try a VM inside the ubuntu installation to check it out.

Otherwise, if you can tell me if plugging in a new keyboard works or not.

Answer 2

One of my colleagues had the same issues and found this. It was the emoji hotkey. I removed this using the following command

gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji hotkey "[]"