On Sunday, 26 בJune 2005 15:13, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> > And kxkb had this for the last 5 years.
>
> Not exactly. KDE 1 had a keyboard switching program called kikbd that
> had that feature (actually: kwm had a feature of using kikbd for
> per-window keymap, and also per-class keymap and such).
>
> However since it did not use XKB, changing a keymap was a relatively
> costly operation and could delay window switching on some occasions.
> That feature was dropped, to the best of my knowledge, when kikbd was
> replaced with kxkb in KDE2
right. kikbd. but indeed kxkb still has that functionality. Its messy as
hell because..
> > IIRC both kxkb and the WindowMaker thingy (can't recall its name)
> > are switching layouts.
>
> No, they're switching groups. Switching a group or a shift-level is
> basically one message to the X server. Switching a layout requires
> defining the new layout.
I may be wrong about the WindowMaker switcher, but kxkb definitely
switches layouts. you have to configure different layouts in the kxkb
kcm (where non-English layouts can elect to have the 'us' group in
addition to the local group, but always as the secondary group), and
this is what kxkb is switching. so if I switch to Hebrew, 'setxkbmap
-print' will show "il,us" and if I switch back (using xkxb shortcut or
tray applet) it will then show only "us".
OTOH, if you switch to Hebrew, and then use the X's group switching
shortcut to change to English, the kxkb tray indicator stays in Hebrew
mode saying you are using the Hebrew layout which means diddly squat to
what language you are actually typing.
I personally find this annoying.
> > I'm currently using something called kkbswitch, which
> > changes groups so it works much better with the "new and improved"
> > XFree4.3 keyboard behavior. AFAIK it will work with any desktop env
> > which offers free-desktop systray support.
>
> XFree 4.3 made the generation of keymaps saner. However switching
> groups in a layout has remained the same.
Yes, unless you like to be able to write in two or more non-English
languages, and be able to sanely switch between them - which was
impossible in pre-4.3 (unless you were up to compiling your own
keyboard layout) and is still impossible today if you insist on letting
kxkb manage your keyboard layouts (or don't know any better).
--
Oded
::..
"I'm not a god, I was misquoted."
-- Lister in "Red Dwarf"
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