Re: [Usability] Keyboard layout preview in gnome-control-center



A new tab is probably not the way to go for this.  Perhaps we can first
construct a storyboard for how this system is used and who it is used
by.  Then we can try to model the best interaction after that.
Well, the story is very simple (well, at least as I see it).

First, this feature (like all the layouts configuration stuff) is only interesting for people using non-US layouts.

Once such a user wants to use his national layout - in most cases, it has to choose which variant he/she wants to use - because most of layouts contain more than one variant. As one Ukrainian person said (translation from Russian): "For now, when I want to choose a suitable keyboard variant, I have to try all available variants and with each variant, press EVERY key TWICE (with and without Shift pressed)". FYI, currently there are 3 Russian variants in xorg distribution - and IIRC it is not the largest number for one country/language. So this preview screen allows to estimate visually whether the choosen layout and variant match the idea of the user of what they should be. Ideally, user should be able to see the layout selection widgets (tabs 2 and 3) and the preview - at the same time, simultaniously. So the "separate window" solution looks good from this POV - but the screen cluttering is my concern here.

BTW, this is not about variants only. Some countries even have several layouts (well, this is for historical reasons, xkeyboard-config is going to change this) - but for now, all existing X servers (up to xfree 4.4.0 and xorg 6.7.0) provide SEVERAL US layouts. Which one should user choose? How can he/she guess without spending time pressing each button?

This is auto-generated rendering of the keyboard layout?  A little tough
on the eyes, but pretty cool stuff. ;-)
Exactly. It needs some polishing - but we cannot improve it much (other than smoothing edges, improve labels placement etc) - because the geometry is generally described in X server geometry.

Regards,

Sergey



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