Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Wed, 2012-04-25 at 11:10 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-04-25 at 09:34 +0200, Rui Tiago Cação Matos wrote:
> > On 24/04/2012, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> <snip>
> > > So, I don't think it really works to just ignore the group mechanism of
> > > XKB and always load a one-group layout... it makes more sense to me to
> > > identify what layouts are needed for all the input sources and load them
> > > into a single keymap ahead of time. Yes, that might limit the user to
> > > switching between 4 languages, but, really, how common is it to need
> > > more than that?
> > 
> > Ok, that sounds like the best way forward then. And yes, I agree that
> > users don't need to switch among more than 4 languages.
> 
> The 4 layouts limit is an artificial limit that causes bug reports and
> raised eyebrows, and was one of the bugs that the ibus/xkb integration
> was supposed to fix. Missing out on it would be a great
> disappointment...

But the main point of the exercise is to provide an integrated, well
designed user interface for inputting languages with billions of users
in total. Are people really reporting bugs because they need more than
4 layouts, or because the UI acts confusing when you try to add more
than 4 layouts?

I'm sure we can engineer a solution to enable more than 4 layouts if
that's really a requirement ... if nothing else, revise the XKB
protocol. But let's not confuse that with the actual goal here.

- Owen