Version: unknown (using KDE 3.1.4) Installed from: Gentoo Compiler: gcc version 3.2.3 20030422 (Gentoo Linux 1.4 3.2.3-r2, propolice) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 When changing keyboard layout with the keyboard shortcut it would be nice to have a visual sign confirming change (in my case the panel is hidden and I use 3 different layouts so I really could use such a feature) For instantce, in the middle of the screen, a little rectangle displaying the flag and the two-letter abbreviation of the new layout (a bit like WindowMaker's temporary visual display when changing desktops).
Excellent idea. I use 4 layouts myself :-) The visual clue should be like the one you get when you change desktops (Ctrl+Tab), with the list of all layouts and the one currently selected. In addition, it would be nice to have a keyboard shortcut for just displaying briefly that visual clue (to remind the user which keyboard is enabled), without having to change layouts, and without having to go all the way to the screen side (my panel is hidden too) to make the panel appear and see the keyboard icon. This is particularly useful when the layouts have a lot keys in common (e.g English/French) and it is not immediately obvious what keyboard you are in.
this is not yet done in KDE 3.2.2
I think your title suits this bug more: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83958 what you asked for is a nice feature especially with my bug
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
*** Bug 201583 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 270519 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This may be not too hard to do as a message in status notifier item in the systray (except I still need to figure out how to pass custom icon with flags) but I have two questions: 1) when keyboard switcher is in "by application" or "by window" mode and active window changes also switching current layout, would you want to see notification as well? Or shall the notification be shown only for "manual" layout change? I would think you don't want that popup show every time you switch the window, but then if you don't see the tray you would not know if layout changed... of course we can add new UI option but there's quite a bit of them already so I would rather not unless I have to 2) would you care to set the notification timeout? or shall it just use some "system default" one? again the less new UI options the better, unless it's really needed
I think it's vital that every change is indicated while creating an option to disable it. I have seen way too many users who got confused when they changed the layout, by mistake. Default to safety, cater to the lowest common denominator and let power users set things up the way they prefer. Richard PS: As you are not allowing anonymous comments on your blog, I am replying here.
This was implemented in Plasma 5 ages ago, but a bug (Bug 408928) prevents it from working on X11. However it works on Wayland.