need an idea for kxkb (multiple variants UI)

[Andriy Rysin]

John Tapsell wrote:
> Maybe you could overlay the text onto the picture of the flag?
>   
We currently overlay layout name over the flag. But if you mean overlay 
variant name on top of layout name on top of the flag? That for me it 
sounds like too much :-\

> Although going off a bit, but for kde4 I would very much like to see
> kxkb and skim (asian keyboard switcher) merged (if only visually into
> one app).  :-)
>
>
>
> On 2/28/06, Andriy Rysin <arysin at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>   
>> 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
>>
>>     
>
>