Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Tue, 2012-04-24 at 20:24 +0100, Sergey Udaltsov wrote:
<snip>
> > 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.

It costs in terms of maintenance, certainly. There's exactly one person
in GNOME that knows libgnomekbd and libxklavier, and that's you.

We have the most dreadful options dialogue, with conflicting options[1],
we have a X server imposed 4 layouts maximum limit[2], server-driven
keyboard shortcuts with limited options[3].

We also lacking integration with input methods that a large number of
users use (and if you want to compare those things, much larger than the
number of people that use "per window layouts").

There will be small regressions, which we'll do our best to fix, and
there will be design decisions made to ignore particular problems and
settings (because I don't see CapsLock key placement as a requirement to
the free desktop).

We need to go forward (and you're merely pointing to problems that we
didn't know existed because code isn't implemented yet!). I'm sure we'll
sort those problems out in due time.

Cheers

[1]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=660924
[2]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=640774
[3]: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=654616