Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

> 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.
Well, if you do not provide GUI tools to configure the "conflicting"
XKB layout, the process is going to be cumbersome.

> Can you elaborate on that? What exactly degrades gradually?
I just meant that one this solution may be safe enough, but every time
you should understand that there will be another one... and another
one... One day you find your system is too slow.
The concerns of Owen are really more important, valid and substantial.
So, I guess it is a bit early to forget about group switching
altogether.

>> (the option "layout per window is must have).
> Why is it a must have? I don't think it makes much sense actually.
It IS must have. A lot of people I know are using it. If I type in
Russian in my libreoffice, then switch to Firefox and use American
layout - I want the Russian layout to be restored once I switched back
to libreoffice. That is important feature, and I am going to support
the wrath of all angry users if you lose it.

> 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.
Errr, those "bug fixes" are in most cases adding new layouts/variants/options.

> Right, I was thinking of IBus users there. There's no reason they
> should be 2nd class citizens.
Absolutely no reason. But there is no reason why XKB users should
suddenly become 2nd class when they were reasonably happy with the
existing infrastructure. Would you agree? By unconditionally enforcing
the united kbd management on them, you are doing exactly that.

> 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.
Well, that argument can go a very long way, down to twm environment,
right? XKB is fully supported by GNOME till 3.4 - why do you insist on
breaking that? Can the integration be done without destroying of what
GNOME already has in place? Yes, for usability sake we could hide
under the carpet the technical difference between IBus and XKB. But
make it accessible still.

IBus runs on top of XKB. Let "average" user experience the "unified"
image of the keyboard world, that is the best approach. Most probably
- with the single list of layouts etc. But if the user wants the
truth, just pure power of XKB, and full xkeyboard-config layout
database - give it to him... It does not cost much - because it is
already there! Just do not break it, build on top of it please.

Sergey