Re: [Usability] Default key-combination to switch keyboard layout

[John Spray <jcs116 york ac uk>]

On Tue, 2004-08-31 at 13:55, Alan Horkan wrote:
> Pressing both Shift keys sounds like a much better idea as it is much more
> difficult to do it accidentally.  Both Alts also seems reasonable, and

Pressing a modifier twice when sticky-keys is enabled "holds down" the
modifier: sticky-keys doesn't distinguish between the "different"
ctrl/shift keys.  Thus, the one-handed user will press their left shift,
then their right shift to activate the combo, and then when they go back
to the letter keys they will be in ctrl mode.

I'm not sure how well sticky keys will cope with the situation in
general: does it work at a low enough level to convince the system of a
"pressing control while holding control" event?  Perhaps it would be
better to have ctrl+shift (on opposite sides of the keyboard) rather
than two of the same key.  Of course, this is more difficult to
remember, and will still cause the first letter keypress to be wrong, if
the user doesn't know to press their last modifier again after switching
layouts.

All of these problems would magically go away if we used an F key with
ctrl or so.  Aren't the F keys international?

Perhaps stickykeys will cope with the situation just fine, we'll see.

John