No 'Enable keyboard' checkbox on VST plugin in Linux

Help, Support & Bugs
1

I have the registered version of Renoise 3.4.4 and the latest version (1.3.4) of Surge XT VST plugin. I can type keyboard characters into the “search” text box within the plugin but not into the “save” dialog (for saving patches), nor in any other dialog.

Steps to reproduce:
Open Renoise
Create plugin instrument
External editor opens
Load patch (Surge) and click ‘save’
Try to enter text into fields of “Save patch” dialog

Expected behavior:
Plugin window has a checkbox at the bottom labeled “enable keyboard” to allow keyboard input to the plugin.
Check box ‘enable keyboard’
Type into ‘save patch’ dialog and click save.

Actual behavior:
No checkbox. Unable to type into dialogs within the plugin.

System info:
Renoise 3.4.4 registered
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (GNOME desktop) amd64 - same behavior on Wayland and X11
Surge XT 1.3.4 VST3 plugin

2

I don’t see any problem without that checkbox in my Arch Linux environment.

$ pacman -Q surge-xt-vst3 renoise reaper sway-git wlroots-git linux mesa
surge-xt-vst3 1.3.4-1
renoise 3.4.4-1
reaper 7.20-1
sway-git 1.10.r7394.c30c451-1
wlroots-git 0.19.0.r7199.e88988e3-1
linux 6.10.5.arch1-1
mesa 1:24.1.6-1
$
3

This may be a problem specific to GNOME Wayland.
Apart from that, sway(wlroots) seems to have a problem with not being able to open [Menu].

4

@tkna I was wondering if Wayland was the problem, but the same problem occurs on an X11 session, too. Also unlike that other Surge bug report, I get context menus just fine. Really the plugin is working great, except for not being able to type into dialogs. (Again, the search box works fine.)

5

@MeGP Is the same true for Ardour and REAPER?
If so, it would be better to discuss this in the Surge community (github, etc.) rather than in the Renoise forum.

6

I guess I can install those other apps, too, to do more research. But I did try on another machine here, also Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Gnome 42 Wayland, kernel 6.8.0-40-generic, and the problem is the same.

7

I can report that Surge in Ardour has no problem with keyboard input. So this seems to be a Renoise problem (which is also what the folks at Surge suggested).

8

I see. So what about Xfce4 (another X11 desktop environment) or KDE or labwc (Wayland compositor other than GNOME)?
By isolating the environment that is causing the problem to some extent, it should be easier to debug in Renoise.

If changing your desktop environment is not very easy, then you don’t have to do it.
Perhaps installing Xubuntu or Kubuntu on QEmu-compliant virtual machine software, Virtualbox, etc. will also confirm them.

9

If GNOME has a keyboard grab to the parent window (Renoise) when a child window (Renoise’s plug-in window) is active (you can play a scale with the computer keyboard), then that may be standard GNOME behavior. In sway, you cannot play plug-ins with the computer keyboard when the plug-in window is active.

10

Well, Ubuntu/GNOME is my main rig for work…I don’t know if I have the capacity right now to try out other desktop environments. I don’t have VMWare on this machine atm. I guess we’ll find out in a couple weeks if 24.04.1 LTS changes the issue or not.

11

UPDATE: I was just able to type in the save dialog for the first time.

I don’t have an exact method to recreate. It seems random, and it usually takes about a minute to do. But if I click L & R mouse buttons alot, randomly, eventually the cursor moves from the end of the line to the front, the text is de-highlighted, and I can type and edit text. At that point I can get a context menu (right click) in the text dialog, which has not happened for me before. (Context menus work fine in the rest of the plugin GUI, though.)

Weird…

12

Per the missing checkbox, I always thought this was missing in Renoise Linux period for reasons not officially explained but kind of assumed. It never appeared in Ubuntu in whatever system config I had at the time, and it doesn’t appear currently in Kubuntu + X11.

1 Like
13

I installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and that seems to correct the problem: I can type into the Surge dialog boxes as expected, with no silly need to click a million times. Maybe it was a GNOME/Wayland issue.