Re: [Usability] Keyboard Layout Options

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

Actually, all these settings are from xorg.xml - so GNOME does not
have control over it (and even cannot guarantee anything about them).

> * What does "third level chooser" and "show alternative group" mean? Are
> these really describing what they do?
Yeah, they do. Some groups may have more than two shift levels - so
there should be a way to choose level 3 (and 4 actually). "Show
alternative group" means some indicator is used to show the group 2
(in the configurations with two groups) - sorry, I do not remember how
it works when the number of groups is 3 or 4.

> Under "Use keyboard LED...."
> * What is the alternative group? Another language? Another layout?
GHM.. Regarding groups/layouts etc I would strongly recommend reading
some XKB documentation. The references can be found here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fLibXklavier
and here:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXKeyboardConfig
Actually, I realize - there is usability problem here, these terms are
confusing - but I don't have any bright idea on how to deal with it.
Basically, layout and group can be considered as a language, to some
extent. Moreover, I'd be happy to change all the words "group" to
"layout" in the UI - but since we support old versions of XFree, where
layouts contained several groups - I cannot.

> Under "CapsLock key behavior":
> * What is the default? I thought that the usability world frowned on
> this... Shouldn't one of the options be appended with "(Default)"?
Well, default is "artificial" option - it means 'do not set any option'.

> * What does "internal capitalization" mean? How is this different from
> "acts as Shift with locking"?
Ghm, if I could only remember... It would require some digging in the
XKB configuration DB. If you are really interested - I'll try to find
the answer.

> * Does "CapsLock toggles normal capitailization of aplhabetic
> characters" and "CapsLock toggles Shift so all keys are affected"
> disable the shift key? Or does pressing shift disable the lock?
Well, it basically affects whether non-alphabetic keys are affected.
Like numeric ones.

> Further, has the help documentation been updated? If not, I'd be happy
> to do so if I understood what all these options meant...
We cannot put these options into the help. Because in general they
depend on the X server used. This is BEYOND gnome's  control.

> Overall, I think the configurator itself is significantly improved
> (kudos to the patcher), but still confusing.
I agree. And I am open to any good ideas which would not involve
hardcoding the option names/ids (since we cannot make solid
assumptions about them).

Sergey