onKeyPress event not fired when typing accents

Browser javascript does not detect certain pressed keys.

Reproduce:
Set any HTML object onkeypress attribute like for example this:
<textarea onkeypress="alert(event.which);"></textarea>

If you press any key in this textarea, it shows you key code.
But if you want write ü or ä (German) in a way, that you press umlaut first and then letter,
nothing happen. It does not work with some other letters (áíéščřžě) and probably more.

It was tested in Opera, Firefox, Epiphany.
(in Opera you have to replace event.which by event.keyCode)

You can try it here: http://extender.ic.cz/keypress.html

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

There is a problem with specific lattin characters.

You want to write e.g. "latin small letter u with diaeresis" (ü). If you write it directly, it works - you get the keyCode. But if you press "diaeresis" first and then "u", nothing will happen.

Note: When run Firefox in Wine, it works.

we will try to get a tester in mozillateam to verify if your testcase is reproducible.

Closing due to age. If this is still a problem in 3.0.7 please reopen this bug.
Also please reopen with all new information on how to reproduce this bug by giving us step by step instructions.
We also need what happens what is expected to happen.
To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

This problem still exists in firefox-3.5/jaunty. The original test case still illustrates the problem perfectly. I'm using a danish keyboard where i need to press umlaut before o to get a ö.

It's not only Firefox problem. This issue is manifesting in all browsers running on Linux - Epiphany, Opera, etc. Probably it is related to X-server.

There is at least one exception though. It seems to work correctly in the Linux Chromium builds for me (from PPA).

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308820

Can someone please test and see if this is still an issue in Firefox 3.6?

Still an issue in Firefox version 3.6.10 / Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu canonical 1.0.

Updated https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308820 . It's been moved to "RESOLVED INCOMPLETE" state. It needs to be reopened on the Mozilla side.

I think I know what is going on. Newer versions of Firefox are firing compositionstart, compositionupdate, and compositionend events; and not dispatching keypress events for dead key combinations. Refer to http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#events-keyboardevents and http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#events-textevents .

There an error in the implementation of compositionend.

Firefox browsers are not firing textinput events. I believe that this is the only way Firefox will enable JavaScript developers to write code that is OS-independent. This is going to require a more senior Mozilla engineer to give the go-ahead as it will involve the talents of multiple engineers.

It's probably worth tracking bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=447757 , as it has a new HTML example attached.

Bottom Line
==========
There are multiple bugs w/r to keyboard events in Firefox on Linux.

Background
==========
JavaScript events have attributes. Mozilla currently does the following for key and text events:

(1) Assigns values to the attribute keyCode for keyup and keydown events. The assignment is often wrong (null) on Linux.
(2) Assigns values to the attribute charCode for keypress events. The assignment is often wrong (null) on Linux.
(3) Bungles the assignment of attributes to compositionstart and compositionend on Linux

The W3C specification declines to specify what the correct values are for assignments to charCode and keyCode. It makes recommendations for the assignment of two new attributes: char and key. In principal,
these assignments could be made more less operating system and browser independent.

(4) Firefox does not make assignments to either of the new char or key attributes. In the tables below, no attempt is made to indicate the lack of assignment. Assignment of both char and key look relatively easy. The previous draft of the W3C DOM Level 3 Events specification was more challenging.

(5) Firefox dispatches compositionstart and compositionend events on Linux. On Windows the behavior is completely different. This is an OS dependency that is difficult to code around.

(6) W3C calls for a textInput event to get fired after the last keyup. If Firefox implemented this part of the spec then the OS-dependency and browser-dependency it's current implementation is requiring could be made to vanish -- at least for the majority of the applications that listen to the keyboard.

In an earlier post on this topic, operating system inconsistencies had not been determined. Now they are and they are large.

Supporting Data
===============

Mozilla key and text event sequences
Firefox 3.6.10
Test URL: https://bug447757.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=474270

Nominal keyboard sequence (Windows: AltGr 2 e)
Country: Albania
Language: Albania

The tables record the event sequence in the order of occurence.

Windows
=======
keyC charC alt event
17 - F keydown
18 - T keydown
50 - T keydown
50 - T keyup
17 - T keyup
69 - F keydown
- 283 F keypress
69 - F keyup

Linux
=====
keyCcharC alt event
0 - F keydown
- 0 T keypress
0 - T keyup
0 - T keyup
- - T compositionstart
- - F compositionend
69 - F keyup

The bug persists in Firefox 3.6.13 (with a brand-new profile) on Kubuntu 10.04. It appears to be Firefox-specific, as Opera and Chrome work just fine.

The broken behavior is still the same. Pressing any dead key only triggers »keyup« (where all values are 0). Pressing a non-dead key after that also only triggers »keyup«, with the »which« and »keyCode« properties set to the value of the base key. E.g., pressing dead acute and 'a' yields:

keyup: which=0 keyCode=0 [for the dead acute]
keyup: which=65 keyCode=65 [for 'a']

Pressing dead grave and a or dead circumflex plus a yields exactly the same.

Mozilla bug 447757. The key events were badly mishandled on Linux.

It is still an issue in a current Firefox release. It is not possible to program custom input elements with, for instance, french language support like on this site: http://create3000.de/users-guide/components/keydevicesensor/stringsensor/#example.