xkeyboard-config: last developments
March 10, 2011 3:26 pm foss, g-c-c, xkeyboard-configI was not blogging here for a while. But the project is still live.
The major event for all of us is going to be GNOME 3 release. There was a lot of changes in the keyboard configuration GUI (now it is search-based, wow!). There was a mockup of what the Regional/Language configuration could look like – and GNOME is very close to it. In order to facilitate that change, some fixes in xk-c would have to be done. Most important, the layout/variant descriptions have to be changed.
In GNOME2, the full variant description was composed of the layout description (usually country name) and the variant description itself. For example, “USA – International”. That schema does not allow creating variants like “Engish (US)”.
Now, the descriptions for variants are full and self-contained. That allows putting there any lines, for example “English (US)”. That is a better approach – but it requires someone to take the latest base.xml.in, walk through it and fix the descriptions. to make them user-friendly If this is done before GNOME3 release – I’ll try to make extra (out of schedule) release of xkeyboard-config. Volunteers, anyone?
PS Last couple of days I got another set of traditional enjoyment, related to Crimean Tartar variant. Here and here. The guy does not get something important…
March 10th, 2011 at 7:54 pm
I think location can be used to determine the best keyboard layouts. Some cities have drastically different ethnic makeups than their surrounding nations.
For example, in this part of Omaha, Nebraska, Spanish is quite a popular language; based on this exact location, I would expect Spanish layouts to be suggested.
March 11th, 2011 at 10:56 am
Thanks, that’s an interesting idea! We need some kind of map allowing to define the combination of layouts for every point on the surface. Never worked with geo data…
March 11th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Does X can handle two keyboards with different layouts? I used to have problems with my laptop (US keyboard) when I connected a (ABNT brazilian layout) to it.
There was no way to inform that this keyboard is like that and the other one is different.
March 16th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
@Victor: Yes X can. Gnome cannot
March 11th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
It’s not that difficult, and there even is a nice Clutter driven widget for that 🙂
March 16th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
@prokoudine: have no slightest idea about using Clutter! And the widget does not replace the need in the DB (someone has to maintain it)