Content assist (Ctrl-Space) in does not work in Eclipse in Debian Gnome running in VMWare for Windows

Question

The Ctrl-Space key combination is not captured by my Eclipse IDE running on my Debian VM.

I changed the content assist preference to Shift-Space and it works fine.

I am running Debian Wheezy 64-bit Gnome inside of a VMWare virtual machine on Windows 8 64-bit.

I have checked:

• Eclipse (Window > Preferences > General > Keys) and checked the entry.
• Gnome shortcuts (System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts) and ensured there is no Ctrl-Space registered to anything.
• VMWare Workstation 9 (Edit > Preferences > Hot Keys) and deselected Ctrl.

In fact, when I try to reassign content assist to Ctrl-Space in Eclipse, I cannot do it. Eclipse will detect the Ctrl but not the space.

Is there a way to find out if another program in Debian is consuming Ctrl-Space?

Answer 1

The current default virtual keyboard app for Gnome runs at startup and captures Ctrl-Space.

Steps to fix:

• Right-click the keyboard icon in the Gnome bar.
• Select Configure > Global Config.
• Change Trigger Input Method from Ctrl-Space.

Answer 2

Another possible issue, ctrl-space is used by newer versions of windows to switch the keyboard into Chinese mode. To fix this in windows 7 I right clicked on the keyboard in the language bar went to settings and deleted all languages except English.

If the language bar is not present goto control panel -> region and language -> keyboards and languages -> change keyboards