[Ayatana-dev] Unified inputmethod/keyboarlayout

[Jesper Lundgren <koudelkaa@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, I hope I am writing this to the right mailing list. I wanted to
discuss keyboard language settings and why I think the way it works
now has usability issues.
I will take myself as a use case for this issue but I know of other
people that also have the same problem. I will use 11.10 beta 2 as
example here as it is the most up to date version.

I speak swedish and english and regularly use both layouts, I am also
trying to learn some korean so I do use korean layout also. To switch
between swedish and english it is very easy and intuitive. I go to
settings - keyboard layout and add both swedish and english and I can
now switch between them and write åäö with my swedish layout.

Now if I want to add korean It becomes a bit more complicated and
confusing. If I add korean in keyboard layout I can only type in
english using that layout. To get Korean I need to go into language
and support and enable ibus and then add korean to ibus. now I am
suddenly doing two things I can switch between input method if I want
to use korean or chinese etc and then switch keyboard layout when I
want to use english/swedish.

Is there some way this could be unified to make it less confusing and
easier to switch between langauges? (possibly use ibus for
everything?)

as extra information I could add that windows also has similar
problem. For korean they have a separate inputmethod that in itself
has english and korean so when switching to korean layout I first need
to do a 3rd level switch to get it to be korean characters instead of
latin. With all operating systems I have used I would say OSX and
Opensolaris are the easiest ones for using multiple keyboard
languages.

http://blogs.oracle.com/sunwg11nprg/entry/switching_keyboard_layout_in_solaris


Sorry again if this is the wrong place!

//Jesper