need an idea for kxkb (multiple variants UI)

[Andriy Rysin]

In 3.5.1there was feature introduced (though broken) to kxkb to allow 
switch same layouts with different variants.
For 3.5.2 the problems with it will be fixed (along with couple of 
others) but there's one little thing to do: somehow show different 
variants in a tray.
Currently user sees only (first part of the) layout code and (possibly) 
flag. One can see full name of current layout and the variant in 
tooltip. But it would be more natural if user could see the difference 
between same layout and different variants.

There also three things to keep in mind:
1) we're in message freeze so no new messages could be added
2) we're pretty tight with space, especially if flag is used the 
visibility of the text is at its limit
3) the code change should be pretty small as we're close to 3.5.2

I have only one idea: currently the flag max height is 14 and tiny size 
of taskbar is 25. So we could potentially move flag up and use 7-8 
pixels below to show several letters of variant name or its abbreviated 
name (in case several variants start with same letters). I was going to 
make this change only when there's the same layout with different 
variants so users which don't use that won't see the change. Also if 
multiple variants are used we could disable showing flag by default to 
increase visibility (flags have much less sense in these cases anyway).

I am going to have some time to provide UI for this feature later this 
week but I'd like to hear any suggestions and comment before I start coding.

Thanks a lot,
Andriy

P.S. I am also open to suggestions for KDE4 where we could make more 
radical changes
 
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