Atraides1959

Q: Different behavior of dead keys at login screen after cold boot

My system is a macbook pro retina 13" early 2015 with el capitan. I discovered the following behavior with passwords containing special dead key characters like abcd~123 as an example. When coming from a cold boot I have to type abcd~~1123. After a first login the behavior changes to abcd~123. My first idea was to check the keyboard layout at the login screen but it was correct german in my case. Has anyone out there a solution to fix this or a hint where to find information about this?

 

Thank you in advance

 

M. Baehr

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on May 29, 2016 4:37 AM

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Q: Different behavior of dead keys at login screen after cold boot

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  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E May 29, 2016 10:21 AM in response to Atraides1959
    Level 9 (50,208 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 29, 2016 10:21 AM in response to Atraides1959

    How do you type the ~ character?

    When I enable a German keyboard, the ~ is at Opt-n, but it is a "chording" character such that holding down Opt-n will combine the tilde with the next character typed. So, to get ñ you would type opt-n, n. To get just a ~ you would have to type opt-n, space (or another character that doesn't combine with ~).

    I didn't see any way to just type the ~ character on a German keyboard.

     

    However, I do not know if the chording keys are active on login.

  • by Atraides1959,

    Atraides1959 Atraides1959 May 29, 2016 2:38 PM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 29, 2016 2:38 PM in response to Barney-15E

    yes the opt-n is the key I'm using. I didn't conceive of using the space to trigger the ~ character. I did some research with a test account and found the following: with a password like abcd~123 one can login after a cold boot and relogin after the first login with the mentioned different key combination but if the password is ãbcd~123 one can only login after a cold boot but never relogin because opt-n+a makes ~a. When logged in opt-n+a makes ã. So the chording keys are active at login from cold boot an after login but not active for relogin.

     

    I think this is a bug.

  • by MrHoffman,

    MrHoffman MrHoffman May 29, 2016 2:49 PM in response to Atraides1959
    Level 6 (15,627 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 29, 2016 2:49 PM in response to Atraides1959

    Atraides1959 wrote:

     

    I think this is a bug.

     

    This is a user forum.    Please submit your bug report directly to Apple.   But first consider investigating the setting the language and keyboard layout at the login support article.

     

    In typical use on the US keyboard, ⌥n is not the tilde character, it's a diacritical mark.  On the US keyboard, ⌥n␠ (option n space) produces the tidle diacritical mark.)  There's a difference between the Unicode characters U+0303 — which gets you the ˜ diacritical — and U+007E — which gets you the ~ here.

     

    Using "odd" characters has sometimes caused problems in some of the boot-time password contexts.