Showing keyboard layout flag and label

[Duncan]

Dotan Cohen posted on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:22:09 +0200 as excerpted:

> In KDE 4.0 - 4.4 one could show the keyboard label over the keyboard
> flag.
> This is great for users who have multiple keyboard layouts in each
> language. For instance, I have a Hebrew layout and two English layouts:
> US and Dvorak. How can I add the label to be superimposed over the flag,
> as was possible in KDE 4.0 - 4.4?

I only use the one (US standard), so have little experience with the 
settings applet or the tray indicator here, but just looking at it...

Now (4.6) the two choices (flag/label) are laid out using what's called 
radio-button widget style.  The idea is that of the old analog tuner era 
generally automotive car radio push-buttons -- you tuned using the knob 
and then set one of the (generally 5-ish) push-button presets if you 
decided it was favorite enough to justify being one of the limited 
choices.  

How it normally applies to computer GUIS is that just like those old tuner 
presets, you can only have one "pushed" at a time.  The telltale style is 
generally rounded indicators (as opposed to the squarish checkboxes, which 
indicate more than one can be chosen at once).

Given that it's using radio-button (only one choice of several possible at 
once) widgets now, and from what you say it allowed both at once before 
(I'd guess with checkbox style choice widgets), it's very clear that the UI 
developers intent is that ONLY one be possible, now (the change was 
deliberate), so it's very likely impossible to set both thru the GUI -- if 
it's not, it's a bug.  

Thus, the only way to have both, /might/ be if you set both manually, 
editing the config file itself to do so.  Even then, it may not work, and 
if it does happen to work, it'll likely be unstable -- any chance viewing 
of the keyboard options in kcontrol will likely reset it to one or the 
other.

So if you want both, it's bug time.  Check and see if there's an existing 
bug... there may well be one that was closed when they switched to radio-
button style that explains why they switched.  There may also well be a 
bug already filed on changing it back.  If not, I'd file one, explaining 
exactly as you did here why you want both, and maybe if you're lucky, with 
4.7 or 4.8 or whatever, they'll change their minds again and switch back.  
(Changes like that will almost certainly occur with the semi-yearly 4.x 
releases as the monthly updates maintain string freeze for i18n/l10n 
purposes, etc.  So you're unlikely to see that change in the 4.6 series 
even if they change it in trunk immediately.)

Well, either that, or look at the code diffs and reverse the appropriate 
patches in the ones you (or your distribution, if you can talk them into 
it) build.  I don't claim to be a coder, but I do run Gentoo, so do build 
from sources, and there's one patch I'm now carrying locally (a gwenview 
zoom-step patch, 100% steps were wayyy too big for me, the patch I apply 
makes it 10% steps...).  That one was fairly easy to find and change in 
the code even if I don't claim to be able to write code or even read it in 
many cases.  It's likely this one would be too, particularly since you 
have it working one way before and a different way now, so you should be 
able to simply check the appropriate diffs.

That's what I like about freedomware... that the code is available and I 
can actually do stuff like that.  It's not like a car factory shipping 
cars with the hoods welded shut, which is what closed source (or even 
source available but without a license to change it) servantware amounts 
to.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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