GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 553086
hard to see current immodule
Last modified: 2008-09-30 00:58:56 UTC
When "System" is selected for immodule, that makes harder to see which immodule is really chosen now. that would be really nice if it's improved. My suggestion to solve this is to modify current input method menu like: +--------------------+ |x System | +--------------------+ |o Simple | |@ SCIM Input Method | |o X Input Method | +--------------------+ A check menu item for System and radio menu items for others. radio menu items can't be changed during "System" is activated. this would displays which immodule is now chosen and keeps consistency between the state in GTK+ and the setting in GConf say. if one wants to change it, they need to turn off "System". then all radio menu items gets gtk_widget_set_sensitive(GTK_WIDGET(item), TRUE). This looks intuitive to me though, how does it look?
I understand the reasoning but the proposal seems wrong to me. Having a special menu item to untick means that you need to fire up the menu a second time in order to actually make youre new choice. That is highly inconvenient. Maybe the actual system input method should just be appended to the "System" menu item. This *might* however make that item noticibly too wide in some cases, depending on the locale and method.
I don't really care either way. In my opinion, the menu needs to remain hidden in favour of desktop-wide selection. Therefore, I wouldn't invest too much time into improving it.
That doesn't solve any issues and current methods to decide immodule isn't that trustworthy. it doesn't necessarily choose the expected immodule. that makes confused and hard to see where the problem is. Currently GTK+ tries to find out the requested immodule or better immodule with 4 steps though, there may be unavailable, and tries to find another one out without any notice. that may be still better to input something for their language. but it may behaves differently. that may causes a trouble when they see any issue. The setting may be delivered through XSETTINGS. but it may not applied properly with any reasons. in this case, GTK+ itself can't knows if it's supposed to be delivered through XSETTINGS or it's just a no request to choose immodule though, people may still sees the /unexpected/ immodule accordingly. this case may looks quite strange. if GTK+ is capable to show up which immodule is currently used, that would be really helpful. Another suggestion is, to warn when falling back. and if one specifies immodule in GTK_IM_MODULE explicitly, stop to fall back immodule if it's not available. to not make confused for XSETTINGS, reserve GTK_IM_MODULE=system for that and apply immodule via XSETTINGS only. How about it?
I've attached a patch to bug 450716 which changes the "System" menuitem to "System (SCIM Bridge Input Method)" or whatever the current system setting is.
Let me know if that addresses your concerns: 2008-09-29 Matthias Clasen <mclasen@redhat.com> Bug 553086 – hard to see current immodule * gtk/gtkimmulticontext.c (gtk_im_multicontext_append_menuitems): Display the actually selected context in the system menuitem. Complaint by Akira Tagoh.