#36: gnome redesign plans for control-center Region and Languages
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Reporter: petersen | Owner: i18n@…
Type: meeting | Status: assigned
Priority: major | Resolution:
Keywords: | Blocked By:
Blocking: |
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Comment (by mfabian):
Chat log of the meeting:
<rtcm> mfabian: hi [14年11月27日 09:04:06]
<mfabian> rtcm: Hi! [14年11月27日 09:04:12]
<rtcm> is it here? [14年11月27日 09:04:16]
<mfabian> I thought so. Is it OK? [14年11月27日 09:04:29]
<mfabian> rtcm: aday yet here. And unfortunately Jens seems to have no
time now
(He is in Brisbane) [14年11月27日 09:05:09]
<rtcm> mfabian: ok. aday sent an email yesterday, if he doesn't show up we
can
at least talk about it a little bit [14年11月27日 09:07:47]
<mfabian> OK! [14年11月27日 09:07:53]
<anish_> hi rtcm mfabian ! [14年11月27日 09:08:08]
<rtcm> anish_: hello [14年11月27日 09:08:50]
* anish_ looks at ueno paragan fujiwarat epico tagoh_ [14年11月27日
09:09:21]
<mfabian> I wonder whether the gear-wheel thing behind the input engines
was
removed on purpose or by accident. [14年11月27日 09:09:45]
<tagoh_> anish_: yes? [14年11月27日 09:10:00]
<mfabian> Allan Day seemed to think in his e-mail that it is not
important.
<paragan> hi [14年11月27日 09:10:13]
<mfabian> Allan> Is it necessary to differentiate input engines in the UI?
My
[14年11月27日
09:10:32]
<mfabian> understanding is that, when people select an input method, they
either
<mfabian> want something generic to their locale (eg. "United Kingdom,
<mfabian> English"), or something specific (like pinyin) - in which case
they
<mfabian> will know what they are looking for. Identifying input method
engines
<mfabian> doesn't help you there particularly.
<epico> hi [14年11月27日 09:10:45]
<anish_> tagoh_, it meeting about g-c-c redesign plans do you want to
join?
[14年11月27日
09:11:10]
<mfabian> I feel that the difference is important and that it is nicer to
see
clearly whether an entry is an input engine or a plain keyboard
layout. [14年11月27日 09:11:59]
<epico> mfabian, yeah, a plain keyboard layout is faster. [14年11月27日
09:12:58]
<mfabian> - input engines usually have some kind of setup tool, keyboard
layouts
don’t. [14年11月27日 09:13:02]
<rtcm> mfabian: the gear icon is still there in g-c-c I believe ?
[14年11月27日
09:14:23]
<anish_> speaking of keyboard layouts, I think would be nice if we can
drop xkb
layouts for Indian languages [14年11月27日 09:14:48]
<mfabian> - keyboard layouts work everywhere, input engines do not work in
applications not supporting input methods (e.g. one user was
confused
about a Russian input methods "behaving weirdly in xawtv, a
plain X11
application not supporting XIM, the reason was that that input
method
does not work in such applications at all and what he sees in
applications like xawtv is the keyboard layout used last before
switching to that input engine. He [14年11月27日 09:15:24]
<mfabian> didn’t know about the difference and was very confused and
even
reported a bug about weird behaviour in xawtv).
<mfabian> anish_: yes, apparently the Indian keyboard layouts do not work
as
well as the Indian input engines do. [14年11月27日 09:15:55]
<mfabian> So it might be a good idea to blacklist the Indian keyboard
layouts.
[14年11月27日
09:16:18]
<rtcm> mfabian: g-i-s doesn't have the icon, but that's mostly due to how
g-i-s
was born - a lot of code just copied from g-c-c and then edited as
needed. I'm currently in the process of moving g-i-s back into
g-c-c so
that most of the code is actually the same [14年11月27日 09:17:01]
<anish_> mfabian, yeah but blacklist is not appropriate here, we simply
remove
it [14年11月27日 09:17:17]
<rtcm> anish_: mfabian: re. layouts, there are a *lot* of layouts that I'd
live
to remove [14年11月27日 09:17:47]
<mfabian> Or, if they are not blacklisted, showing the difference between
an
input engine and a keyboard layout is useful here as well
(Indian
keyboard layout: will have some problems because typing a single
key
cannot insert multiple characters, Indian input engine: does not
have
that problem) [14年11月27日 09:17:49]
<mfabian> anish_: remove would mean remove it from the "xkeyboard-config"
package? [14年11月27日 09:18:46]
<anish_> mfabian, yeah if its not useful or no longer used why to keep it
[14年11月27日
09:19:14]
<mfabian> In case of the Indian keyboard layouts, if they are not working
properly, it is probably best not to offer them to the user at
all
(Why offer something which does not work well? That’s only
confusing.) [14年11月27日 09:19:47]
<mfabian> Allan Day mentioned pinyin, which is a phonetic input method, so
it
can be used with almost any keyboard layout. [14年11月27日
09:20:47]
<rtcm> removing, would mean moving most of the "crazy" from evdev.xml into
evdev.extras.xml [14年11月27日 09:21:21]
<rtcm> mfabian: ideally this should be done upstream [14年11月27日
09:21:37]
<mfabian> Therefore, it makes no sense to show a keyboard layout next to a
pinyin engine (many input engines are phonetic like pinyin)
[14年11月27日
09:21:39]
<rtcm> but we could patch the fedora package as well [14年11月27日
09:21:47]
<mfabian> rtcm: Moving into evdev.extras.xml seems like a good idea.
[14年11月27日
09:22:00]
<mfabian> evdev.extras.xml is blacklisted already, if we move the Indian
keyboard layouts there, they are practically gone for "normal"
users.
[14年11月27日
09:22:29]
<rtcm> mfabian: do you mind looking at that? [14年11月27日 09:23:48]
<anish_> cool [14年11月27日 09:24:18]
<mfabian> rtcm: Yes, just put it on my todo list, I’ll try to discuss with
xkeyboard-config upstream moving the Indian layouts into
evdev.extras.xml. [14年11月27日 09:24:20]
<rtcm> mfabian: cool. yes, upstream would be definitely better. and yeah,
we can
start with the Indian layouts but hopefully we'd move like 50% of
those
layouts out into extras [14年11月27日 09:25:30]
<mfabian> For something like pinyin or most Japanese input methods, I
think it
makes sense to select not only that engine but also a keyboard
layout.
[14年11月27日
09:26:03]
<mfabian> One may want to use pinyin with a US layout, one may also want
to use
it with other layouts (e.g. something like the German layout
where z
and y are exchanged). [14年11月27日 09:26:42]
<mfabian> To be able to understand this, the gear-wheel icon is helpful, I
think. [14年11月27日 09:27:03]
<rtcm> I mostly agree with that, I think what we've been lacking is a good
UI to
do it [14年11月27日 09:27:28]
<rtcm> mfabian: btw, how does windows handle this? [14年11月27日 09:28:02]
<rtcm> if I'm not mistaken selecting the default windows Japanese IME
always
uses the same keyboard layout [14年11月27日 09:28:47]
<rtcm> (i.e. just like we do) [14年11月27日 09:28:55]
<rtcm> not saying we should try to do better than windows btw ;-)
[14年11月27日
09:29:23]
<mfabian> rtcm: On my wifes windows computer (old, Windows XP) it seems to
work
badly. [14年11月27日 09:29:24]
<rtcm> *we shouldn't ! [14年11月27日 09:29:30]
<mfabian> The Japanese input method *always* uses the Japanese keyboard
layout. It seems to be impossible to use the Japanese input
method
with the German layout. [14年11月27日 09:30:06]
<mfabian> So when switching between JA and DE, they keyboard layout always
changes, which is terrible. My wife has put lots of little
stickers on
the keyboard to show the differences, is is quite annoying.
[14年11月27日
09:30:52]
<rtcm> yeah [14年11月27日 09:31:07]
<rtcm> I'll speak with aday about this issue in detail when I see him
[14年11月27日
09:31:33]
<mfabian> Another detail I noticed in the picture showing a keyboard
layout:
https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master
/system-settings/region-and-language/input-sources.png
<- at the bottom [14年11月27日 09:32:24]
<mfabian> This seems to correctly show the United Kingdom keyboard layout.
[14年11月27日
09:32:45]
<mfabian> Notice the | key between the left shift key and the Z which is
missing
on the US layout. [14年11月27日 09:33:17]
<mfabian> This is quite nice! [14年11月27日 09:33:21]
<rtcm> heh, yeah, but it's just a mockup [14年11月27日 09:33:43]
<mfabian> Can that be made to work in practice? [14年11月27日 09:33:50]
<mfabian> (I believe it does not work in reality now) [14年11月27日
09:34:17]
<rtcm> I don't think so, I mean, we can just always show that key, though
that
will be wrong for US layouts [14年11月27日 09:34:26]
<mfabian> But which extra keys will we show then? [14年11月27日 09:34:51]
<mfabian> The Japanese layout has an extra key on the right side, between
the /
and the right shift key, for example. [14年11月27日 09:35:10]
<mfabian>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#mediaviewer/File:KB_Japanese.svg
[14年11月27日
09:35:22]
<rtcm> mfabian: depends on the keycode I think [14年11月27日 09:36:01]
<mfabian> Should we always show the maximum number of possible keys and
leave
them empty or wrong for layouts with fewer keys?
[14年11月27日
09:36:20]
<rtcm> we can probably not draw them if there's no symbol for their
keycode in
the keymap [14年11月27日 09:36:58]
<rtcm> that's the most we can do I believe [14年11月27日 09:37:13]
<mfabian> rtcm: That sounds like a reasonable idea, have a picture
containing
the maximum number of keys and omit those which are not used in
the
selected layout. [14年11月27日 09:37:56]
<mfabian> Would there be a way to warn the user that the selected layout
cannot
work perfectly on his physical keyboard? [14年11月27日 09:38:39]
<mfabian> I mean, if the user has a physical US keyboard and selects
English UK
layout, he will not be able to type | because that key is
missing.
[14年11月27日
09:39:10]
<mfabian> I have no good idea how to do that at the moment, because it
does not
seem possible to detect what physical keyboard is there.
[14年11月27日
09:39:40]
<anish_> another thing is are we going to remove setup menu of IME's from
panel,
https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/blob/master
/system-settings/region-and-language/panel.png
[14年11月27日
09:39:49]
<rtcm> one way to be more accurate would be to have a small wizard that
asks the
user to press some keys in specific positions and then work out the
physical layout from that [14年11月27日 09:39:58]
<mfabian> And asking the user what his physical keyboard is might confuse
many
users. [14年11月27日 09:40:11]
<mfabian> rtcm: If that can be made to work it would be great.
[14年11月27日
09:40:31]
<mfabian> If we know the physical keyboard, we could warn the user when
selecting a layout using keys he does not have on his physical
keyboard: “Attention, you can use this layout but you will not
be
able to input the following characters then: |...”
[14年11月27日
09:41:35]
<mfabian> anish_: The setup menu for the engines should be easily
accessible, I
think. [14年11月27日 09:43:04]
<rtcm> yeah possibly. still with the amount of variety we're starting to
see
more and more in laptops these days, I'm not too hopeful for that
tbh
[14年11月27日
09:43:24]
<rtcm> I just got an x240 recently and it has the PrtSc between the right
alt
and ctrl keys... [14年11月27日 09:44:56]
<mfabian> anish_: currently, a gear-wheel icon to open the setup menu
appears
when one selects an input engine in “gnome-control-center
region”. In the mockups it is not clear to me whether this is
still
intended or not. [14年11月27日 09:45:11]
<anish_> mfabian, yeah that is why I asked, I thought may be set up menu's
are
again moving to drop down list of IME's [14年11月27日 09:47:20]
<mfabian> The “+” button to add an input method now occupies a full row
from
left to right, so the “setup” gear-wheel button seems gone.
[14年11月27日
09:48:23]
<mfabian> And where is the “-” button? Will it appear when an input source
is
selected? [14年11月27日 09:48:47]
<mfabian> “Remove buttons are only shown when there is more than one input
source.” is written next to the mockup. [14年11月27日 09:49:28]
<mfabian> There are 2 input sources in the mockup but no remove button.
[14年11月27日
09:49:43]
<rtcm> mfabian: those are the kinds of things I pester aday about when
implementing :-) [14年11月27日 09:50:17]
<rtcm> it's just an overlook, I'm sure [14年11月27日 09:51:00]
<anish_> mfabian, would be good idea to move setup options from g-c-c
panel to
drop down IME menus [14年11月27日 09:51:53]
<mfabian> anish_: I think yes. But that depends on the implementation of
the
IME. [14年11月27日 09:52:16]
<anish_> mfabian, yeah [14年11月27日 09:52:30]
<mfabian> Not all IMEs have this in the drop down menu at the moment.
[14年11月27日
09:52:36]
<mfabian> And Allan Days guidelines advised *not* to have this setup in
the drop
down menu from the gnome panel. [14年11月27日 09:52:59]
<mfabian> I think it is very useful to have it there though.
[14年11月27日
09:53:24]
<rtcm> mfabian: I think the idea is that the commonly accessed functions
should
be menu items in the panel and thus the setup tool doesn't need to
be
there [14年11月27日 09:57:13]
<mfabian> Some users didn’t find the setup tool for an engine at all when
it
was available only in “gnome-control-center region” when
selecting
that input engine. I feel it is nicer to have it available in
both
places, it doesn’t hurt and makes it easier to discover.
[14年11月27日
09:59:00]
<rtcm> sure, I won't deny that [14年11月27日 10:01:11]
<rtcm> it's a small issue anyway and trivial to fix either way
[14年11月27日
10:01:37]
<mfabian> Yes. [14年11月27日 10:01:44]
<mfabian> I think it should of course be available in “gnome-control-
center
region” and if the author of the input engine feels it should be
in
the panel as well, then it is fine for the author of that input
engine
to add it there too. [14年11月27日 10:02:45]
<mfabian> I have no more ideas/comments on that redesign for the moment
...
[14年11月27日
10:05:43]
<rtcm> ok, I'll take some of these points to aday later [14年11月27日
10:06:43]
<mfabian> rtcm: Thank you! [14年11月27日 10:06:53]
<anish_> thanks mfabian rtcm [14年11月27日 10:06:55]
* rtcm gets more coffee [14年11月27日 10:07:57]
<mfabian> ☕️ [14年11月27日 10:08:56]
<paragan> thanks all :) [14年11月27日 10:10:31]
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Ticket URL: <https://fedorahosted.org/i18n/ticket/36#comment:10>
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