DBus server for keyboard layouts

[Sergey Udaltsov]

> Having multiple layouts configured isn't the problem.  Having them
> dynamically change around is.
Hehe, I cannot tell you how popular PuntoSwitcher is, among Russian
MSWin users. The program which _automatically_ switches layouts
depending on what you type (trying to "guess" your words). There is
even attempt to recreate if for X (xneur).

> I don't mind using qwertz (or rather, I
> don't mind that much), but I want it to be predictable.
When the application have enough context information - I would
consider automatic layout change predictable, why not?

> "The french word for colour is colour."  So the second instance of
> colour in that sentence is tagged as French, thus the layout changes.
> But there's no visual indication of it being in a different language.
If you don't even want spellchecking - you would not bother changing
text language at all. If you want it, it most probably means you have
a number of french words in your text - you would be better off using
French layout anyway, because with US/UK layout you could not get
necessary diacritic letters and other funny ones like œ.

> I find it hard to conceive of a use case where you'd change layout
> actively when writing a text
Technical text in Russian would contain a lot of English words.

> corrections, since typo fixes etc are usually single letter changes, but
> even then the difference between 1 key presses and 2 key presses is
> pretty low.
But I do not see why it would be a bad idea to help peopl.

> And if you're correcting things, it's probably easier to
> correct one language at a time anyway, so you can set the layout
> beforehand.
No, I don't think that's the case. The text is corrected at once, from
start to end. Not "first English words from start to end, then Russian
phrases from start to end".

> But the special case is already possible.  Change it manually.
Why do something manually if computer can automate it?
> Also,
> I'm pretty sure that this behaviour is possible to implement on the
> widget level if necessary.
Yes, technically you are right. The only thing is that XKB API is not
the most comfortable in the world, and it is rather low-level.
Generalizing DBus interface for these things would help app
developers.

Really, I do not quite understand why you're so opposite to that idea.
The price of it (in GNOME desktop at least) is next to zero - the code
is already there in gnome-settings-daemon (the code which manages XKB
configuration).

Cheers,

Sergey