Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format) [LWN.net]

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 9:02 UTC (Tue) by muwlgr (guest, #35359)
In reply to: Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format) by pointwood
Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

I don't think you have ever used Cyrillic keyboard layout among Latin ones. KDE offers its own layout switching shortcut Ctrl-Alt-K, but the problem is that some key has to generate Latin K. In Cyrillic layout, no key generates Latin K (the usual key generates Cyrillic L instead), so you are unable to switch from Cyrillic to Latin by keys, and you have to reach for your mouse which is very inconvenient and annoying.

I think this problem has too deep roots somewhere in Qt, so it is inherent to KDE and unlikely to be fixed any time soon.

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Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 9:25 UTC (Tue) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link]

No, I've never used Cyrillic keyboard layout so I'm not aware of that
specific problem. I can see how that would be a problem for people needing
that. Have you searched bugs.kde.org or reported the issue?

If it is a problem in Qt, then it might be fixed in Qt4 which is the basis
for KDE4. This could mean that it will be fixed in around 6 months or
whenever KDE4 will be released.

This specific bug might mean that KDE isn't usable for you, but you are
not everyone. I'm also fairly sure there exist similar cases with gnome
and every other desktop environment.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 12:38 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

I like facts, so I created an default user and logged in under gnome, to
test how Gnome handles keyboards... Let's see...

* the keyboard configuration dialog has four tabs and more geek options
than I could understand. (But to be fair, since all these options are just
the usual xkb things, there's not much Gnome can do apart from hiding
them. KDE spreads the same stuff over three tabs.) The third tab doesn't
show text until I click on a vague stippled dot.

* no indication of a shortcut to change keyboard layouts: googling doesn't
give me one either for gnome, instead I'm told to use the panel applet.
However, if I add a second keyboard layout, the applet doesn't get added.
That means, no way to change the keyboard at all by default. (Maybe
there's a shortcut, and maybe it does work, but it is not widely
advertised.)

* Googling tells me that "separate group for each window" means having a
different keyboard layout per window.

* When Russian is active, the keyboard shortcuts don't work, at least not
in firefox, because the keyboard does send the Cyrillic keysym instead of
the the latin one. Same as with KDE. I think this problem has its roots in
X11, not just Qt. In other words, if KDE does just not work for you,
neither does Gnome.

Just for context: I do use a lot of different keyboard layouts since I
regularly type Greek, Cyrillic, English, Dutch (which needs
us-international) and sometimes, but not as often, Devanagari.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 12:43 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Oh, and one more thing: if you check the option "Include latin layout" in
the first tab of the KDE keyboard layout config page, then ctrl-alt-k
_does_ switch from Russian to Greek to US to Devanagari. You need to
enable it for every non-latin keyboard layout, though.