Re: [Re: [2.4 feature freeze- bring it on]]

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Seth Nickell wrote:

> I think (1) is better for now, at least given the current state of
> adding/removing panel applets. It would be nice if (2) could be the preferred
> option in the future, because it would have a very nice effect of reducing
> load on the desktop prefs. ah well.
>  
My personal view of this is that gswitchit is essentially two things: 
some code to select which keyboard layout to use (or layouts), and an 
applet to switch between the different layouts.

While switching between multiple keyboard layout groups is fairly 
specialised, I would expect a lot more of our users would want to be 
able to select which (single) layout they want to use (assuming we can't 
make this selection automatically based on the user's locale).  For 
these people, there is no reason for them to use a layout switching 
applet, so placing the setting in the applet's preferences does not make 
sense.

It shouldn't be too difficult to design the UI to allow setting up of 
multiple keyboard layouts in this interface.  That way, the applet is 
simply a way to switch between the previously configured keyboard 
layouts, and could have close to zero preferences.  It could easily have 
a link through to the keyboard preferences control panel though.

For comparison, I did this screenshot of the Windows keyboard control panel:
   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/images/win2k-kb-props.gif

It lets you add and remove "input locales" (which seem to be a 
combination of a keyboard map and input method extension), and select a 
default layout.  If you configure multiple locales, you get an icon in 
the notification area that indicates the currently selected layout.  You 
can use the context menu on the notification icon to select a layout or 
bring up the keyboard control panel.

One other thing to notice is that the notification icon uses text rather 
than a flag.  The use of some flags is almost definitely going to offend 
some people or governments.  For example, the Chinese government doesn't 
really like the Taiwan flag, and some people don't like their country's 
flag).  While in most cases it isn't a problem, it looks a bit weird if 
only a few flags are missing.

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/