Space key stops working

Hi,

This happens to me about once every two weeks and so far I do not know how to reproduce the error. So maybe you have suggestions what to try next time.

The symptoms are I can normally enter text - but no space. When I hit space it beeps - and that's it. This is in the command window as well as in the editor. Making Matlab pretty unusable. The weird thing is - in another Matlab window space is working fine - also in other programs.

My solution so far is restarting Matlab - which is annoying. I tried lots of key combinations in case this was like the one annoyance with the insert key - but so far found none that would solve it.

Today it happened to me in a freshly started Matlab process. It was running a few minutes - but I didn't perform any calculations. Noted it when I tried to cd to a directory with spaces in the name.

If it matters I'm still on 2009a.

[Jan]

Did you update the JRE or do you use the one shipped with Matlab?

[Walter Roberson]

What happens if you copy and paste a space in? How about if you use the virtual keyboard?

[Michael Katz]

What OS are you using? Are you using MATLAB through some kind of remoting software?

[Clemens]

Sorry for the delay.

I am on windows XP. And yes I did update JRE. But I'm working on the machine that got matlab installed.

I'm not sure if I did try to copy and paste a space. Should try it next time explicitly.

[Clemens]

By the way - about Java I got "Java(TM) 6 Update 24", "Java(TM) SE Development Kit 6 Update 20", "Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 6 Update 1" installed.

Answer 1

[Jan]

Try to start Matlb without java:

matlab -nojvm

Or run Matlab with the Java version included in the installer by deleting the environment variable MATLAB_JAVA.

If the problem vanishes, the updated Java is likely the cause. With Java 6.24 under Matlab 2009a/WinXP I got several other problems, e.g. I could not update the position of UITREE objects reliably, if the figure is resized. But the keyboard worked fine.

I had similar problems with non-functional curly braces after using an updated JRE under Matlab 6.5.

[Clemens]

Well since I can't reproduce it - no idea if it helps.

But I just updated to Java 6.26. Maybe my troubles are gone (cross fingers).

Answer 2

[Clemens]

Update It just happened again. Came back from coffee break - and just blinking.

Directly before I was changing the windows design. I was looking through logs and if the Java console could give me info.

As last resort I tried minimizing and maximizing the window - and it seems to be restored.

so my current theory is that matlab doesn't survive layout changes.