Re: Concerning Keyboard Status Menu

[Mathieu Bridon <bochecha fedoraproject org>]

[Note: I'm not a GNOME developer, I don't have Git access, I'm not part 
of any conspiracy, but I'm actively working on improving the inputting 
experience for Traditional Chinese in Hong Kong]

On Thursday, November 22, 2012 05:01 PM, Ma Xiaojun wrote:
> However, why the menu in keyboard status menu become something that
> requires engine specific hacks?
> I saw one for anthy.
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=682314
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/commit/?id=9659d934ac190a6363fc5b59f3c62ef305f56c52
>
> What about ibus-chewing, ibus-pinyin, ibus-table and probably other
> engines especially 'third-party' ones then?
> Without property menu they are much less useful in practice.
>
> If you have concerns the property texts, other things about
> 'supported' engine, why don't you contact IBus upstream and request
> for change?

ibus-table had no upstream for a very long time.

I know it, because I spent weeks trying to find who was the upstream 
maintainer (and IBus people didn't even know) until kaio recently took 
it over. (I can't be grateful enough to him for this)

How can GNOME (well, mostly one developer and one designer) track all 
the upstreams of all the engines, when some don't even have upstreams at 
all?

Also, and that's a more general observation, GNOME 3.6 is **the first 
time** there is any kind of integration of the input methods. Did you 
really think it would be perfect the first time?

There will be improvements in 3.8 and beyond, I'm sure Rui has a TODO 
list that extends to the next few years. :)

And part of these improvements is for people who actually use input 
methods to come and explain GNOME people what would be a great user 
experience for their language.

That's probably why Anthy has these integration points: because some 
Japanese people (users and developers) came together and gave feedback 
on what their inputting experience should look like.

That's what we've been doing in Hong Kong for the past few months too, 
both in discussing locally when we meet, and talking with Rui and Allan 
about what we needed. (and we're not as well off as Anthy users for 3.6 
because we're starting from a worse point, and we don't have as many 
knowledgeable people here).

And that's what people who care about the user experience for their 
languages should do. Because ultimately, only them can do it. There is 
no way a non-Chinese designer (as good as he is) can figure out on his 
own the perfect user experience to input Chinese. Chinese people have to 
help him design that user experience. And at least for Hong Kong, it's 
going on very well. (although slower than I would have hoped, but the 
ball is on our side)

It will take time, but it's going to work out eventually and provide a 
truly great user experience.

Now I know you have some solid programming skills as we've worked 
together on some changes to ibus-table in the past.

So please, let's write less emails, and more patches, to make IBus 
better, both inside and outside of GNOME. :)

Cheers,


--
Mathieu