Unable to type less than and greater than symbols, types 3 and 7 instead

[paulvictor]

Minimal reproducible example
When trying to run

$ echo -n '<>' | xdotool type --clearmodifiers --file -

I would expect the output to be <> but instead I get 37 as the output.

The outputs for typeing < and > are 3 and 7 respectively.

Version : 3.20210804.2
As a matter of fact, I faced this issue even with 3.20160805.1 , and I assumed that upgrading would fix it.

--
Paul

[jordansissel]

Very strange. This should work! I wonder what causes it.

Question: When you type <> normally, are these on your 3 and 7 keys (as in, maybe shift+3 types < ?)

Sometimes this is caused by a bug in xdotool (which I have not found a solution for) for certain keyboard mappings. I do all my tests, unfortunately, with a US keyboard mapping, and folks with different locality/keyboard mappings experience issues that I do not. I'd love to get this fixed.

If I test this on my workstation, it works as expected:

% echo -n "<>" | xdotool type --file -
<>

Can you attach the output of this command: setxkbmap -print ? Sometimes this output helps us figure out the next step to resolving this.

Related issues:

• xdotool is changing letters #97
• xdotool key/type breaks with multiple keyboards with different layouts #150

[paulvictor]

Here is the output of setxkbmap -print

xkb_keymap {
	xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)"	};
	xkb_types     { include "complete"	};
	xkb_compat    { include "complete"	};
	xkb_symbols   { include "pc+us+apl(common):2+inet(evdev)+group(win_space_toggle)+terminate(ctrl_alt_bksp)"	};
	xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc104)"	};
};

I use xdotool in a script to type out my passwords.

Interestingly when I type setxkbmap before xdotool, I am able to get the right keys typed, but it messes up my xmodmap config. I have been using this script for long, so am not sure what change I made to allow this sort of behavior.
A possible reason could be I started using xcape to allow modifiers to be key sequences in themselves(for easier working on emacs) and here is the relevant config : https://github.com/paulvictor/dotfiles/blob/master/nix/user/home.nix#L1143-L1149 mapping Shift_L to escape, Shift_R to a combination which is my window manager prefix and left and right Ctrl's to C-x and M-x.

[paulvictor]

Closing this as doesn't look like its a issue with xdotool itself. I switched over to using interception-tools and things seem to be working.