DBus server for keyboard layouts

[David Weinehall]

On fre, 2007-10-05 at 10:12 +0100, ext Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
> >  How exactly should that work when switching between applications?
> There can be 3 scenarios:
> 1. If you switch to the "classic" app (which does not support
> "context-driven" layouts), there are no changes:
>   - if DE/WM implements "layout per window" mode, each application
> "remembers" its layout.
>   - otherwise the layout is preserved on switching
> 2. If the app supports "context-driven" layouts, the layout would be
> changed depending on where you caret would be put to, immediately
> after switch.

So, let's say I'm writing a document.  Most of the document is in my
native language, Swedish.  Naturally I have my keyboard layout set to
Swedish.  Some parts of the document is in German and (British) English.

If moving the cursor into the German text would suddenly swap the
keyboard layout to qwertz, I'd be *very* *very* *very* upset.  I'd be
similarly upset if the brackets and square brackets suddenly shifted to
the position where I normally expect "å" and "¨" to be normally.

People who write multi-lingual documents that necessitate a keyboard
layout that differs from the one they normally use are a minority.  A
very small one.  A minority that won't suffer from having to move the
mouse cursor all the way up (or down, left, or right) to their menu bar
to switch the keyboard layout (there are probably even ways to map
keyboard shortcuts built into the various desktop environments to do
this).

A general rule of thumb in software design is to optimise for the common
case while allowing the special case where feasible.  In this case, the
common case is mono-lingual or at most bi-lingual documents in related
scripts (or combinations of scripts from cultures that normally have
dual script keyboards, such as Japan), not multi-lingual documents.

The special case can still be dealt with by the user through a simple
mouse action or a keyboard combination (and most of the newer keyboards
these days are crawling with extra function keys that makes it
unnecessary to even use keyboard combinations; a single key press will
do).

[snip]


Regards: David