From kde-usability Fri Feb 23 21:30:06 2007 From: Ben Aceler Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:30:06 +0000 To: kde-usability Subject: Keyboard layout in KDE 4 Message-Id: <200702240030.06879.aceler () gmail ! com> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-usability&m=117226628817401 Non-english speaking users (such as me) are worried about keyboard layouts in KDE 4. It was not good in KDE 3, what will be done in KDE 4 about this? I had a conversation with mr. Iaconelli, he forwarded me here. I am a contact person from the Russian KDE team (www.kde.ru) and I can speak from the name of our users. Most of they do not speak english, so I am an ambassador here :) (If my english is not good too... I am sorry) The problem is, that the layout switching in KDE is too complicated. You have at least three ways to do it - using kxkb, using kkbswitch, and using Xorg directly. Most of the users uses last way - because the kxkb is not as simple, as it seems to be, but Xorg is not the best way - because it configures only by root and it is a text config file, not a GUI. But if you try to use kxkb - you need to setup it (and the options is untranslated), you need to setup switching layot in kxkb, setup switch hotkey in kxkb, and then to setup switching hotkey in the "hotkeys" section (!). And if you want to set the hotkey to group of modifiers, they will not work as modifiers anymore. For example, if you set Ctrl+Shift as hotkey, the hotkeys Ctrl+Shift+a will nt work.... Another issue that Ctrl+Shift+K becomes Ctrl+Shift+Л in russian layout, and some programs are not working with it. Also, we have a lots of ideas about layout switching usability. First idea is to switch the text cursor lenght as caps indicator. The same thing is using in Nokia smartphones - when the cursor is long the caps is on, otherwise it is off... The second - is to put layout indicator near the text cursor. Maybe only when keyboard layout switchig, maybe constantly - it need to be tested. Another idea about layout indicating shown here: http://www.artgorbunov.ru/bb/ui/cursor/ There are some more ideas, but I think, that this mail is already too long for one :) Am I in the right place? -- mailto://aceler@gmail.com jabber://aceler@jabber.ru http://aceler.livejournal.com/ _______________________________________________ kde-usability mailing list kde-usability@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability