January 28, 2011
g-c-c, gnome, libgnomekbd
1 Comment
Bastien did a really great job adopting the kbd configuration panel for the GNOME3 g-c-c style. Thank you, hadess! Even though the decision to drop the model is still questionable for me (discussing in d-d-l), overall it looks more consistent with other g-c-c panels than 2 days ago. Also, a number of bugs related to the keyboard rendering are closed (again, my gratitude to Bastien for filing them).
The future challenge for me is to implement “search” for layouts…
October 13, 2010
g-s-d, gnome, libgnomekbd
32 Comments
GNOME (gnome-settings-daemon) was supporting custom xmodmap files for ages – as a convenient way to tweak the kbd config. I heard several times about people using that feature – even though it was never important, used by minority. Yesterday that feature has gone from g-s-d.
Since I feel that at least rudimentary xmodmap support is necessary, I made libgnomekbd load $HOME/.xmodmap if it exists. Hope it won’t be much trouble for people to change their configs.
Actually, I would be interested to hear here in comments about the ways people use xmodmap with gnome.
The discussion on IRC was quite hot. My apologies for some bad words, lads – I did not control myself well enough. Even though that does not eliminate my points about importance of xmodmap – and in general about our (GNOME) attitude to features used by minorities. Minorities matter. 99% = 99*1%
August 20, 2010
g-s-d, gnome, libgnomekbd, ubuntu
32 Comments
TWIMC. The keyboard indicator to be shipped with Ubuntu 10.10 has little to do with the standard gnome keyboard layout indicator. Canonical moved the thing to libappindicator library which was not officially adopted by GNOME.
So, there are some important consequences:
- If you are end-user running ubuntu 10.10 and you have complains about gnome keyboard indicator, you’re not really welcome to bugzilla.gnome.org. First, you should file your problem at Launchpad. If the Ubuntu team finds the problem down the stack, they sure will escalate it.
- A lot of Ubuntu users (including myself) were happy to utilize non-documented but working support for flags in GNOME. In Ubuntu’s implementation that feature is not supported, AFAIK. You’re welcome to complain in Launchpad.
- Single-click layout switching does not work any more (I was told). You’re welcome to complain in Launchpad
As a GNOME developer, I am very concerned about the fact that Ubuntu is starting to create its own version of GNOME. All distrovendors have patches, but Canonical seems to be gone a bit too far, on my taste.
As an end-user, I am quite irritated. I am thinking about switching back to Debian or Fedora (considering the fact that Ubuntu’s support for PowerPC is not great anyway).
I would appreciate if someone provides explanation on how to get original gnome keyboard indicator in Ubuntu 10.10. I did not install that version yet – but people are asking.
April 21, 2010
libgnomekbd, xkeyboard-config
6 Comments
There is one interesting request in bugzilla: using notification service for displaying CapsLock/NumLock/ScrollLock state change, for those wireless keyboard that do not have LEDs.
How would you distinguish – what keyboard needs that feature enabled? I guess it would be logical to check XKB geometry… I know, better than anyone, about the sorry state of the geometries now – but it can be improved, right?
December 21, 2009
g-a, gnome, libgnomekbd
16 Comments
Since gnome panel and applets are about to go relatively soon, I feel obliged to do something about that. Here are some unchained thoughts related to it…
The gnome keyboard indicator applet is to become deprecated. What’s instead? The only viable option, no matter how I dislike it, is the notification area icon. Or, in terms of gtk+, GtkStatusIcon. What’s important is that it cannot be a Gtk widget (there are good reasons for that). So the widget gkbd-indicator that was used by the existing applet, is getting useless – I just can reuse some of its code.
But there is an issue with gnome-screensaver. The screensaver is using gkbd-indicator widget in the unlock dialog (and it has to stay there!). That means I’ll still have to support the widget (unless, hehe, gnome-screensaver would suddenly start implementing notification area conventions). As the result, libgnomekbd will have two “layout indicating UI elements”. Somewhat ugly, on my taste…
PS The GSwitchit Plugins will not be supported by the new GtkStatusIcon-based indicator.
PPS It is still a shame that one cannot easily produce GdkPixbuf using cairo. The way through GdkPixmap does not work correctly because the transparency is lost by gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable (“If the specified destination pixbuf is not NULL and it contains alpha information, then the filled pixels will be set to full opacity”). The only way is using some code snippets. Why cannot that be put into gtk?
gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable
December 18, 2007
g-a, g-c-c, libgnomekbd
No Comments
Yesterday, there was a “tarballs due” date for 2.21.4. A day before I realized that wonderful layout printing code (kindly contributed by Ed Catmur, all my gratitude and respect) should be shared – it does not belong to g-c-c but should be generalized in libgnomekbd. So, yesterday night, an hour before the deadline, libgnomekbd 2.21.4.1 was released (there was libgnomekbd 2.21.4 a week ago) – with one new function in API. Now, both g-c-c and g-a in svn depend on libgnomekbd 2.21.4.1 (the last .1 is essential, hehe!). In return, they both offer layout printing functionality, isn’t it nice?