ubuntu-users Digest, Vol 30, Issue 200

[Dmitrij Ilchenko]

> > The only reason is that i've got used to Ctrl+Shift switching already
> > and I had it worked in Debian, so i see no reason why it shouldn't
> > work in Ubuntu. Internal keyboard switcher of KDE doesn't offer a
> > Ctrl+Shift combination,
>
> Yes it does. And even if not, you can custom define it.
>
> > and in Gnome when i enabled keyboar switcher
> > applet - you know what i've got....
>
> No I don't. I don't use Gnome.
>
> > No matter what do I use -
> > KDE/Gnome/Xfce/IceWM - they are all X Window Systems. So, they "obey"
> > to a config of X server (Xorg here in Ubuntu), so the layouts should
> > switch as specified in X config, if not overwritten by internal
> > application. Am i wrong somewhere?
>
> It's no longer all at the X level rather at the application level. I'm
> no CS major so if someone could step in and clear up some facts I'd
> appreciate it. Here's what I know: KDE can, at it's own level,
> interpret keystrokes and insert the Hebrew/Russian charatcer as
> desired. X doesn't even know that you've switched layouts. And some
> applications, that are not KDE based, might not work as expected.
> Firefox is a good example. In gnome, Hebrew keyboard shortcuts work as
> expected in GTK most GTK apps. Firefox, despite being GTK, does not
> recognize Hebrew keyboard shortcuts. It's an application bug.
>
> > So, again. The topic is - i want to get Ctrl+Shift switching of
> > keyboard layouts work. It doesn't. Why?
>
> Because you're tying to do it with X. Set it in KDE/Gnome and see what happens.
>
> > About your side note - i've met the same problem... especcially
> > painful when using ICQ, as for me. But really in this case I only know
> > 2 solutions:
> > 1) get used that if you're in Hebrew, the program won't do the "paste"
> > action if you press Ctrl+V :(;
> > 2) setup something like xneur or internal applets of desktop
> > environments to track layouts in different windows separately, so if
> > you switched to OpenOffice and written something in Hebrew copied it
> > somehow, then swithced back to mail client where you had English
> > turned on, and pasted it by pressing Ctrl+V, it will paste :) As i
> > know, xneur works both in gnome and KDE, and internal Gnome applet has
> > a feature of "remember layouts of every window"
>
> In gnome apps the shortcuts work as expected, so I'll file a bug at KDE.
>
> Dotan Cohen
>
> http://what-is-what.com/what_is/skype.html
> http://technology-sleuth.com/long_answer/what_is_a_firewall.html

Oh, thanks. Maybe so. I am not really sure that i'm right about X, so
i will try to use internal KDE/Gnome features. But, as i know, KDE
can't use "bare" combinations of Ctrl+Shift,Ctrl+Alt and so on for any
shortcut. And in Gnome.... I'm going to reinstall Ubuntu today, and
we'll see if my problem really appears only after enabling internal
keyboard switching in Gnome. If so - i'll fire a bug. But i don't know
where to - ubuntu or gnome. i'm a newbie in reporting bugs and asking
questions in mailing lists....

P.S. As i know, those internal switchers are only frontends to xkeymap
or xmodmap(i don't exactly remember the utility name), that are used
from console to manipulate xkb. Why do i think so? Because they use
the same options, as xkb offers and i managed to enable debugging info
of that switching applet in Gnome, and when errors occured it pointed
out that it cannot execute this utility with specific parameters. If
someone clears facts, i would appreciate that, too.