GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 346752
Remove the automatic activation of alt+alt for layout/group switch
Last modified: 2009-01-19 19:42:19 UTC
Contrary to what was requested more than two years ago in bug #137428, I would like to request the removal of the automatic activation of "Both Alt keys together change group" after adding a second keyboard layout. The GNOME desktop has improved a lot since 2.5.x and I find that it is now more convenient to use the keyboard switcher / keyboard layout indicator applet to switch layouts instead of using key combinations. Using Alt+Alt for switching layouts causes some problems (see bug #346029, which is now moved to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7430) and these problems are more annoying because the user is not told that this key combination is activated automatically when a new keyboard layout is added. Also, this is not deactivated when the additional keyboard layouts are removed. The "keyboard layout indicator" applet is probably a more intuitive way to switch layouts for most users because it is both a way to switch and an indicator, which is very useful when different layouts are used for different windows/workspaces. So I think that it would be better if the addition of a new keyboard layout would not automatically activate some hidden key combination, especially if that causes problems with some applications due to the xkeyboard-config bug mentioned above. I can think of several ways to resolve this issue: 1) Do not enable any keyboard shortcut automatically. Let the users use a panel applet or activate their own shortcuts if they prefer that way. 2) Enable a keyboard shortcut automatically, but inform the user about it with a very visible message explaining how one can activate or deactivate this option (e.g.: switch to the Layout Options tab, blah blah blah...) 3) Enable a keyboard shortcut automatically, but change it to Alt+Shift, which is the default shortcut on some other well-known OS and could provide a workaround for bug #346029. Note that this was rejected in bug #137428 due to usability issues, but I think that it would be the lesser of two evils in this case. The first option would be the best IMHO.
Thanks for putting all the relevant links in this report. I tried out Alt-Shift-Arrow keys in nautilus and I have the impression that the Shift key does not make a difference; Alt-Arrow keys does the job. I am not a big Nautilus user yet; is there a list of Nautilus shortcuts that mentions this? I could not find it in the documentation. When a distribution is installed with the selection of a specific locale, the end-user expects to have something like English and local language enabled by default. For example, in Ubuntu 6.06 with Greek installation, we can write English/Greek by default as soon as you login. The "Add US English and Greek layouts", "Make English the default", "Use Alt-Shift to switch" are configuration settings we requested to have the installation program do for us. One thing that is missing is to have the keyboard indicator appear by default; we will request this for the next Ubuntu. I do not know what is the common shortcut for other languages to switch layouts. I would suggest: 1. The installation program of distros have the option to pick and choose the specific shortcut for a language, in case some countries are used to different shortcuts. 2. If a user wants to use the Keyboard Preferences to add manually an additional keyboard, she should get on the same dialog box the option of which is the default shortcut to switch languages. As it is now, the default shortcut is well hidden in the Layout Options. I do not know how best to design this, perhaps a message to the usability list to help out? For some ideas, this is how some other OS puts all these together, http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/keyboards/winkey.html 3. From point (2), there should be at least one shortcut available for keyboard switching. From the points you list above, I am inclined to pick (3).
Raphael, I think Simos is right - a message to the usability list could start some brainstorming... Personally, I'd go for (2).
Raphael, did you get anything from the usability list?
FWIW, the discussion about brokenness of RAlt-LAlt switching is here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7430
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!