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

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Sergey V. Oudaltsov [mailto:sergey.oudaltsov@clients.ie] 
> > I don't understand this. Why does an older version of XFree 
> force us to show
> > pictures of flags on the panel instead of some text?
> Actually, I explained it in my reply to Christian. 
> 
> 1. XKB switches not layouts, but groups (well, it is true for any XKB
> implementation including  XFree 4.3.0)
> 
> 2. In 4.2.x- one layout very often contains several groups. Actually,
> layout "ru" has 2 groups "US/ASCII" and "Russian".

So why wouldn't you show 2 flags here?

> 3. When applet gets current group number (say, 0) it gets the 
> group name
> in form ("US/ASCII"). The layout name "ru" simply cannot be 
> used here -

So you can't show a flag here either, because you don't know about that "ru"
group?

> it is same for both 0th and 1st groups (for 4.2.x- and others).
> Actually, flags CAN be used here - but the flag names will be strange,
> like "US/ASCII.png" (well, / should be escaped somehow:) and
> "Russian.png"
> 
> 4. In 4.3.0, gswitchit merges single-group layouts (us,ru) so 
> it can use
> the layout name instead of the group name. And flag names like us.png,
> ru.png... really make sense to me (and people who contribute 
> them). That
> is how gswitchit currently works.

Hmm, I don't claim to understand all of this, but I hope that this is a good
explanation for people who are less ignorant than me.

In principle, I guess that, if you know enough to figure out the flag then
you know enough to use some text instead of the flag. Exactly what the text
should say is probably more complicated though.

Does gswitchit currently work with XFree < 4.3.0?

> So the full truth - yes, I can use use group names in all X servers -
> but the flag file names will be really strange (unless I put some bad
> mangling map inside the app).
> 
> BTW, in X servers which do not support multiple layouts, gswitchit
> disables layout buttons (set/clear) for all layouts but 
> first. It looks
> confusing (user chooses layout 'ru' and gets 2 groups) but I can do
> nothing about it.
> 
> Did I answer your question? So the problem here is that xkb
> configuration stuff created by SGI (and cloned by other X servers) is
> really ugly. And we should either mask this ugliness using 
> some hacks -
> or use the version which straighten things up. Your choice?

Hopefully someone can still come up with a better solution. If not then
maybe we really need to consider being dependent on a newer version of
XFree, though other XWindows systems are used too, for instance on Solaris.

This part of the discussion is less fun.

Murray Cumming
murrayc@usa.net
www.murrayc.com