Support Application Indicators

Needs some fine tuning which needs some additional support for application indicator.

Patch for libgnomekbd required by this fix. (I will create a bug for that package with the patch later)

The change is really not trivial, could you explain why it's required there? Did you set the copyright to somebody else than yourself if you write those new sources in purpose too?

Currently the libgnomekbd functionality used by the gsd keyboard plugin is mixed into a GtkStatusIcon subclass (GkbdStatus), I extracted that all into a singleton GkbdConfiguration class, which makes it possible to use it with an application indicator.

It would probably make sense to reimplement GkbdStatus and GKbdIndicatorWidget in terms of GkbdConfiguration, but that can still be done later.

This patch does not require an updated libgnomekbd anymore.

Thank you for work there

I've a first look over the change, some small comments:

- any reason to not rename on_status_icon_activate() in the indicator case?
- the xkl debug statement could probably be kept in the indicator case too no?

otherwise the changes looks fine I will upload that to lucid. We still want to get the libgnomekbd refactoring suggested upstream rather than the lucid g-s-d only solution though

> - any reason to not rename on_status_icon_activate() in the indicator case?
> - the xkl debug statement could probably be kept in the indicator case too no?

Yes, I will provide an updated patch tomorrow.

> We still want to get the libgnomekbd refactoring suggested upstream rather than the lucid g-s-d only solution though

Yes of course.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 2.29.91.1-0ubuntu3

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (2.29.91.1-0ubuntu3) lucid; urgency=low

  * debian/control.in:
    - build-depends on libappindicator-dev
  * debian/patches/06_use_application_indicator.patch:
    - change by Jan Arne Petersen to use application indicators (lp: #497875)
  * debian/patches/90_autoreconf.patch:
    - refreshed for the previous change
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:37:58 +0100

I just wanted to note I miss the old keyboard indicator applet which actually showed my current keyboard in the place i defined myself.

Then it was migrated to a notification area icon, so I must look for it among network manager, skype, etc. icons. But it still actually indicated my current layout and it was okay.

But what's the implication of this patch? It now just shows a keyboard picture somewhere among other application indicators, isn't it more clever to just remove this thing at all than turn it into some kind of visual garbage? Please?

Thank you for your comment, not sure how much other users rely on the keymap to be displayed on screen directly rather than just using the menu to pick one, the design is somewhat easier since it allow you to pick the one you want to use

Hm, I'm not sure if much users are using keyboard indicator to change the layout at all. Everybody just uses layout change key combo. Or am I missing something? It just seems to me that actually indicating the current layout is more handy than an ability to change it by clicking on the indicator with mouse.

I for one know the layout I'm using, it's obvious to notice while typing and I find the options being in a menu easier to use than cycling randomly through 3 chars labels

The "show current layout" regression is bug 531173. I'll also file another one, since the current layout in the menu is wrong when using the key combo.

OK, as a summary, this caused two regressions: bug 531290, and bug 531173, which I targetted at beta-1. (Since this broke FF, and reverting the patch will also sort of break FF, we need to get this sorted ASAP).

It also makes changing the keyboard layout quite painful now. I filed that usability regression as bug 531296.

reopening since the change has been postponed to lucid+1 since that requires labels support in the indicator

the issue is fixed in maverick now

Could please Jan or anyone else answer the questions asked in bugzilla.gnome.org, in relation to libgnomekbd patch?

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=610836