Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Rui Tiago Cação Matos <tiagomatos gmail com>]

2012/4/24 Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>:
> Let's sat you have two layouts - in XKB and IBus, for the same
> country. The user would be presented with only one - IBus (if you
> decided it is superior, which it may well be!). The user would not be
> able to choose the XKB one, effectively damaging its experience
> outside of IBus world, right?

As long as the user is free to quickly switch with a shortcut to
whatever other input source he wants I don't see that as a problem.

> Fair enough.. Well just keeping in mind that the performance degrades
> gradually:)

Can you elaborate on that? What exactly degrades gradually?

Are you're saying that the time the X server takes to handle
"setxkbmap <layout>" will get longer and longer with repeated runs of
that command? That would certainly be a bug which ought to be fixed.

> (the option "layout per window is must have).

Why is it a must have? I don't think it makes much sense actually.

>> These aren't changing every month are they? Every once in a couple of
>> years? I think we can just maintain a list of what's useful on the
>> GNOME side.
> base.xml.in changes much more frequently than once a couple of years:
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/log/rules/base.xml.in

I meant changing as in "addition of new layouts". Bug fixes, sure,
we'll get those whenever a new version of xkeyboard-config is
released.

>> Honestly, if a user is locally editing stuff under /usr/share/X11/xkb,
>> is he our target user? Remember that what I'm trying to do here is
>> keyboard input configuration be hassle free.
> Err, if we put XKB options aside, I do not quite see why the current
> search-based way is not hassle-free. Well, yes, having IBus and XKB
> separated is confusing, I admit.

Right, I was thinking of IBus users there. There's no reason they
should be 2nd class citizens.

> There should be the option (ok, hidden in gsettings): "show me all XKB
> layouts/variants, show me all XKB options!" Effectively turning 2ndary
> IBus filter off. That would make everybody happy. But in order to
> implement it, you need to parse base.xml ;)

I don't agree. If you know about all that stuff you can just as well
configure everything yourself outside of GNOME and disable the
keyboard g-s-d plugin.

Rui