Why does Okular change my Cinnamon key bindings?

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1

I’m using Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS with Cinnamon 6.0.4.

I’ve configured Ctrl-Alt-T to open a new terminal (xfce4-terminal) and PrtScrn to open gnome-screenshot.

When starting Okular to open a PDF the key bindings change (temporarily): Ctrl-Alt-T opens Konsole, PrtScrn opens Spectacle. Why?

When starting Okular without (!) opening a PDF the key bindings don’t change.

When key bindings have changed and I restart Cinnamon (wether by logging in/out or by restarting it from the taskbar’s context menu), my intended key bindings are back again.

2

well… ubuntu comes with gnome, and while cinnamon is also GTK based, okular is Qt based belonging to the KDE plasma desktop.

so you have quite a mix going on there… you should expect some weirdness.

the only advice i can offer is that i use this command to list what files were changed in the last minute to help ferret out what is going on.

find -not  \( -path './snap' -prune \) -not \( -path './.cache'  -prune \) -type f -mmin -1  -printf "%C+ %p\n" | sort -n | tail -10
3

I’ve never seen this weirdness in two decades running this mix of a gnome-based desktop environment and some additional kde/qt-based software. That’s why I’m curious about it.

The only changed files your nice find command lists are these two

~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/database-shm
~/.config/okularrc

My guess is that Okular (or a used lib) changes something within the shared memory. If I restart Cinnamon the original settings are back. Fun fact: If I start Okular (btw: 23.08.5) the second time after having restarted Cinnamon then Okular won’t change the key bindings again. This is somewhat weird, too. :smiley:

4

Mystery half solved: Okular (and other KDE Plasma programs like Kate, Konversation or Krunner) start /usr/bin/kglobalaccel5.

Solution: Restart Cinnamon or killall -HUP kglobalaccel5 (attention: kills all children, too)

5

A final note on this: In my opinion it is a bad design that an application changes the system’s global key bindings. That should be the job of the desktop environment but not of an individual application. No KDE/QT application but the Plasma desktop should start /usr/bin/kglobalaccel5.

6

So it only happens when opening a PDF, not just starting Okular? Might mean Okular’s pulling in some KDE config when it actually has to render something. That would explain the kactivitymanagerd changes.

7

So it only happens when opening a PDF, not just starting Okular?

Yes, see initial post.

8

Looks like you’re running into the following bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435420

Based on the lack of any recent activity, I’d guess it was somehow addressed in the foundational transitions that were part of the KDE MegaRelease 6 a couple years back.

Ubuntu 24.04 will forever be stuck on Plasma/Frameworks 5 and those old versions of KDE Gear, though - so if this is in fact fixed in the newer versions, a fix landing in Ubuntu 24.04 would require someone at the distribution level to develop/backport a patch to the old versions of KDE software that they are still distributing.

9

Thanks for this interesting link. :+1: Now being aware of what’s going on I know how to deal with it. May be an upgrade to 26.04 will heal it, may be not, we’ll see…