modifier-only shortcuts

[Andriy Rysin]

Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Thursday 6 July 2006 15:55, Andriy Rysin wrote:
>> There's one very often requested feature for keyboard layout switcher -
>> to be able to use modifier-only shortcut for switching layouts. E.g.
>> Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift like it is on Windows.
> 
> Doing so will disable a _lot_ of potential shortcuts to be used by others. 
> That and the fact that its really bad usability to stray from the rule 
> that a 'normal' key should always be included in the shortcut.
> 
> See for a related issue: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1569

1) it's not a single key shortcut, so it's not completely applicable to
the related issue you've posted above - I'd agree that one key shortcut
is bad/dangerous but two modifier keys don't have problems described in
the link

2) catching e.g. Ctrl+Shift not gonna affect _any_ derivative shortcuts,
as it'll be activated only if you press and RELEASE ctrl+shift, if you
press ctrl+shift+a it'll go through to corresponding handler

3) thousands (millions?) people use those combinations on windows and
even X (check xkb options for switching groups) and they don't complain,
instead I see people complain about kxkb

4) the only problem with two modifiers is if you were thinking pressing
e.g. ctrl+shift+a and then changed your mind before pressing 3d key - I
occasionly get into that situation - in this case I have to press it
again to switch back to my original layout - but this is not special - I
occasionly get into similar situation by holding Shift for 8 secs
thinking :)

5) now the main agrument for things like Ctrl+Shift is convinience -
people who type latin languages may not notice it that much but when
somebody uses e.g. Cyrillic the story is different - in modern world
there so much latin words or signs missing  from localized layout
(especially in IT) that you may find switching layouts several dozen
times while you type simple email.
Now imaging that you used to do that with two adjucent fingers and now
you have to use Ctrl+Alt+K taking two hands(!!!). Imagine more - you
have more than two layouts and you'll feel those who report this bug to
kxkb.

6) the only suggestion I can do to people right now for KDE3 is to use
smth like Ctrl+Menu (which I am using myself) or Ctrl+/ which MAY happen
to be together on your keyboard. The problem is obvious - many keyboards
either don't have those keys or they are not together.

7) just to keep in mind how convinience may matter - to simplify my life
I use another trick from X - using Right Alt key to switch layout groups
temporary. I.e. I define my layout as e.g. en+ua (by 'Include latin
layout' option which also helps with latin key shortcuts problem - but
that's different story), thus if I am typing ukrainian and need to
insert 1 or 2 latin symbols I just press RtAlt+<mylatinkey> and then
continue typing in cyrillic. Taking to accound I have 3 layouts, that
means otherwise I'd have to
a) switch to en
b) type my symbol
c) switch back to ru
d) switch back to ua

So if we're not going to implement modifier-only shortcuts in kdelibs I
have only two suggestions:
1. Implement this functionality only in kxkb, transparently for other
apps - that's how it's done in gnome-switcher/libxklavier, and I am
working on libxklavier integration so we could potentially have this
functionlity almost for free.
NOTE: we would have two places for defining shortcuts or having main
shortcut in kcmkeys and 'advanced' in kcmkeyboard_layout
2. Make standard layout switching shortcut from Ctrl+Alt+K to smth which
is very convinient, e.g. Ctrl+Menu but hopefully applicable for most of
the keyboards (and also don't use a letter - that's another problem Ill
describe later this week).

Again, please understand me right - I am for clean design both in UI
approach and coding but it's just that this is the place where by
simplifying our life we make users suffer.

Andriy