It was changed intentionally. Why do you want to use flags if both are the same?

The flags, even though the same, are also an icon for the indicator in the system tray. Without icon it looks a bit weird in the tray..

But esthetics aside, both 'show ..' options are checkboxes, suggesting both are possible at the same time. If you want to keep this new behaviour (I very much hope not) they should become radiobuttons.

I use the German qwertz layout as well as the variant Neo 2. I appreciated in the past that both the flag and the label are shown in the keyboard layout indicator. But now I can only see the flag which doesn't of course change while switching the two layouts (so I can't distinguish the two) or I can see the rather ugly text labels.

I would very much appreciate if you would switch to the old behaviour, so that it is possible - optionally - that both flag and label are shown in the keyboard layout indicator.

*** Bug 247374 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

The same is valid for me. I regularly use two different German layouts, so it would be really nice to have the flag with label on it back. I would propose another option in kde system settings to enable the combination of flag and label or otherwise have flag OR label.

Thanks for your attention! Best regards,
Thomas

The option of having a flag OR label is already there.

However, since the last update, I no longer can change the label. So not choosing the flag gives me two equal labels.

I can confirm that. The label is editable, but not saved when pressing enter.

Created attachment 50720 [details]
Snapshot: changing label for keyboard layout works in 4.5

Hmm, changing the label works for me - I've attached the snapshot above.

Having flag-only and label-only should suffice taking to account one can change label. Though currently I agree UI is not very straightforward, it should have been radiobuttons - I'll take care of it in 4.6.

I'll also consider adding "old" mode flag+label though it feels redundant to me at the moment and displaying text over flag reliably is quite tricky (as flags differ quite a lot in sizes and colors).

I would really appreciate the old behavior (flag+label). Using different layouts in the same country is the reason for it.

By the way, changing the label works here, as long as the length of it is <= 3 characters. If you type in more, it just resets to the previous label.

IMO it´s not redundant (see reasons above), and not tricky (old behaviour worked great). I have never seen problems with flag size, and there should be plenty of options available for blending in KDE, see for instance how desktop icons are handled, with various effects and text shadow and such.

You mentioned that it was changed intentionally. Can you point us to a mailing list discussion where that issue was discussed?

I had announced my plans in May when keyboard2 moved the kdereview and the only note was from David, but he didn't reiterate after the move was made:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=127291088506998&w=2

It seems there's several issues here:
1) checkbox "show flag" is misleading - should be radiobutton
2) with label-only mode users can change the label to tell variants apart, but that may be not obvious (but I think that should be an issue even if the flag is shown as if layout is the same the flag AND default label will be the same - that's same as in 4.4)
3) people say labels are "somewhat" ugly :), but personally I think they look way better than in 4.4, and now some more reasonable code (borrowed from plasma) is used for shading letters instead of old-hacky-way-visible-only-on-some-flags, so if we add back "label-over-flag" mode the letters appearance won't change back (they just be overlayed on flag) and that may look ugly, unless font is reduced or some other tricks are implemented

so what I am thinking to go ahead with:
1) change "show flag" checkbox with radiobuttons
2) improve a way to tell users they can change labels if same layout with different variants used (not sure exactly how to do that, may be change default label if same layout added twice, but then if I had a reliable way to autogenerate unique and reasonable label for such cases I'd just do it automatically and don't confuse users with label editing)
3) add label-over-flag radiobutton, but I would wait for this and see if 1) and 2) help the problem

In any case if 1) and 2) can be considered for 4.5, 3) won't happen until 4.6

Created attachment 50759 [details]
snapshot of choosing/defining keyboard layout

On this window I can't find any possibility to change the label.

Created attachment 50760 [details]
window to add a keyboard layout

Adding a new layout does not have this possibility of defining a label either

(In reply to comment #13)
> Created an attachment (id=50759) [details]
> snapshot of choosing/defining keyboard layout
> 
> On this window I can't find any possibility to change the label.

You double-click on label cell to start editing (same as for variant) - that's what I was talking about in 2) - marking the cell as editable should help here, I just need to find out how. Also adding label field to the "add" dialog seems like a good idea.

To edit the label I tried to click RMB on that field, obviously I did not try to double-click. For me RMB is more natural; it should give you the possible actions on that field.

Thanks for the thorough response Andriy

Too bad you didn´t get more feedback in the list. I wish I was subscribed to kde-core-devel back then :) But now that it´s in a stable release my guess is there will be more voters for this bug once 4.5 hits the mainstream distros..

My comments on your points:
1) agreed
2) maybe a small edit toolbutton inside the label cell? Then it´s a matter of a simple single left-click. The input box should however limit the input to 3, so we don´t get false ´cant edit label´ reports, as seen above. Maybe also increase the limit to 4 chars.
3) if you re-introduce the label + flag option, you should go back to using checkboxes again.

Additionally, if you detect 2 variants using the same map, you could show a popup when pressing Ok/Apply suggesting to use the ´show label´ option.

That said, I STILL think the old behaviour should be an option :) At least users can decide for themselves if it suits them (we´re not Gnome!). I am willing to help improve the blending code to make it more independent from the flag colors.

I've pushed a change (both trunk and 4.5) to make "show flag"/"show label" radiobuttons to make it more explicit.

(In reply to comment #17)
> 3) if you re-introduce the label + flag option, you should go back to using
> checkboxes again.
I think that even in this case 3 radiobuttons will be better, as two checboxes allow 4th combination "neither is checked" which we don't want

So I've introduced some improvements for label only to be useful (via more explicit UI to edit labels):
* changed checkbox 'show flag' to radio buttons: 'show flag'/'show label'
* added "label" edit in the 'add layout' dialog (it's visible if label mode is on)
* added 'single-click on selected cell to edit' flag so it's easier to trigger
* also now label text in the table doesn't show if 'flag' mode is selected

I've also added a separate bug to track adding 'flag+label' option: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249121 (this won't happen at least till 4.6)

I've also added a separate bug to track adding automatic unique label suggestion if same layout added twice: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249122 (this may happen in 4.5 branch - not sure yet)

SVN commit 1168344 by rysin:

kcm_keyboard UI improvements to remove confusion about flag/label mode work
BUG: 244145
FIXED-IN: 4.5.1


 M  +17 -0     kcm_add_layout_dialog.cpp  
 M  +26 -2     kcm_add_layout_dialog.ui  
 M  +10 -3     kcm_keyboard_widget.cpp  
 M  +57 -2     kcm_view_models.cpp  
 M  +18 -2     kcm_view_models.h  
 M  +2 -0      x11_helper.cpp  
 M  +2 -0      x11_helper.h  


WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=1168344

SVN commit 1168345 by rysin:

kcm_keyboard UI improvements to remove confusion about flag/label mode work
BUG: 244145


 M  +17 -0     kcm_add_layout_dialog.cpp  
 M  +26 -2     kcm_add_layout_dialog.ui  
 M  +10 -3     kcm_keyboard_widget.cpp  
 M  +57 -2     kcm_view_models.cpp  
 M  +18 -2     kcm_view_models.h  
 M  +2 -0      x11_helper.cpp  
 M  +2 -0      x11_helper.h  


WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=1168345

BTW I could not find a nice and easy way to indicate editable cells and there seems to be no standard way to do it. If I find how to do it I may add this later.

There seems to be a confusion about the commit that made this bug "fixed". The commit only clarified that it is currently not possible to enable both the icon as well as the text label in the system tray indicator.

Bug 249121 has been opened by the author as a new request.

Thanks for clarification Christoph!

Yes this bug is closed as UI now clearly indicates two things:
1) it's not possible to have both flag & label
2) in 'label' mode, the label is editable so if same layout used twice you can still have different labels shown in the indicator

If you want 'flag+label' mode you can follow Bug 249121, though better don't just wait but send patches which reliably and nicely draw the label over any flag. :)