Re: [Usability] Re: [Fwd: Re: Your final comments on gswitchit in 2.4...]

["Andrew W. Nosenko" <awn bcs zp ua>]

: > I'm using a language which has only a couple of characters more than
: > english
...

[skip]

: The same is basically true for me. 

[skip]

: There's actually only one
: character in German that's not at all possible to type in from a
: standard Swedish layout and that's s-z ("?"). So there's been little
: need to change the layout

[skip]

: I would love to know a language that uses a different script than latin,
: which would then make frequent keyboard switching a necessity, but the
: sad truth is that I don't. So I guess this still leaves the question
: open for i18n people that use keyboard switching a lot and are
: interested in usability issues to come forward with their experiences.

OK.  I try to show simple example: east Ukraine.  There need 3 languages:
1. English (for comunicating with computer, or you know another name for
   cat(1) command? ;-)
2. Russian for communicating with peoples
3. [very rare, but unavoidably] Ukrainian itelf for filling official papers.

No possibility exist for place all required symbols on keyboard into two
layouts without losing functionality.  At least 3 layouts required.

But because 3th layout (Ukrainian) is used wery rare, then cyclic
switching "Eng -> Rus -> Ukr -> Eng -> ..." is uncomfortable.  Need fast
switching "Eng -> Rus -> Eng -> ...".  Solution: "Eng <-> Rus" switching
do from keyboard and make Ukr accessible only over mouse by clicking on
the applet.  GswitchIt allows this (remember secondary layouts?)  The
dot.  All are happy.


Yet another example.  About need/unneeded discussion.  How many
"latin-based" users writes from right to left?  But, for some "strange",
reason I don't see any who say that r-t-l support is unneeded, too
complicated and unused.  But I see discussion when some amount of
peoples says that support of cyrrilic keyboard layouts in GNOME is
unneeded, too complicated and should be reduced to state of unusability.
Yes, excluding/don't including GSwitchIt from/into GNOME means
no-more/no-less that support/unsupport of cyrrylic under GNOME without
hacks.  At least in my opinion.  Yes, these hacks are exists.  But
reason to use its if exists right way?  Or you think what GKB is usable in
cyrrilic environment?

PS.  Excuse me is I affront someone -- nothing personal was there.  But
     it has been worrying one for so long.

-- 
Andrew W. Nosenko    (awn@bcs.zp.ua)