The complexities of keyboard layout switching

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Mihai — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:38:18 GMT

If we get to talk about keyboard annoyances: starting with XP (I think) changing the user locale (“Standards and formats”) also adds the matching keyboard.
I know, might be about convenience, and the fact that people changing the “Standards and formats” kind of think is about “language I want to use,” kind of including the keyboard.
It might be convenient for the users, but formatting should have nothing to do with keyboard.

I think the confusion of the poor user is caused by the fact that the keyboard layout is well hidden. It was moved from keyboard (which might not be right technically, but it makes sense for a normal user), and is now buried under the “Language” tab (no indication about keyboard) and under something called “Text services and input languages.” Again, kind of clear for the programmer, but the user wants “keyboard.”

So, “feature request”: let formatting settings to affect formatting (not keyboard) and make clear where the language of the keyboard is set.

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

John Ingres — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:14:55 GMT

Would be nice indeed for casual users. They get frustrated and I haven't found a way to thread my wife yet;)

Another nice feature would be more control on the keyboard shortcut. Choices are limited and they sometimes conflict with other applications & plug-ins.

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Ben Cooke — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:33:06 GMT

This design was annoying me just the other day. I was working at home and using remote desktop to my office. I already had a desktop session active from the previous day when I was sitting at the console. My work machine has a UK keyboard.

In the morning I was working from my garden on my laptop. (Yes. I know I'm a smug git!) My laptop has a US keyboard. I switched over to the US keymap when I happened to have my text editor focused, and it worked. I then switched somewhere else and ended up typing at-signs where I wanted quotes. After a while I had them all switched.

Later in the day it got a bit too windy to work in the garden, so I retreated to my home office where I have a UK keyboard again. You can guess how the rest of the story goes.

Of course, I knew about this issue before I started, but I don't encounter it very often since it's only really when Remote Desktop comes into play that you end up typing with the "wrong" keyboard.

For my purposes, I'd be happy just to have an extra button on the language bar called "Change All Windows" which applies whatever is selected across all threads there and then.

I've moaned before about Remote Desktop dealing in scancodes rather than characters, but I accept that it's a architectural limitation. :)

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

josh — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:32:57 GMT

Even better and probably more evil would be not to do it for all windows, but for that physical keyboard (if you used a keyboard shortcut) or all physically attached keyboards at the time (from a menu, etc.)

I've got a US PS2 keyboard and a Japanese USB keyboard. It would be insanely cool to be able to type in the right language just by moving to the other keyboard. Maybe not convenient, but cool.

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Michael S. Kaplan — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 10:42:09 GMT

Hi Josh,

That one would actually be much harder, given the lack of any good standards related to detection of the hardware's language....

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

cnettel — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 16:26:46 GMT

You don't need to detect what's actually painted on the keys, "just" what HID actually made the input. (It would make even more sense for mice with different DPI properties, or you could even have two identical pointing devices, just with one carrying an implicit setting of much lower sensitivity for pixel-precision work.)

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Michael S. Kaplan — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 20:32:22 GMT

Hi cnettel,

This causes all kinds of other problems like with the input queue and more importantly with the input cache -- what do you do with input that is in progress like via dead keys or IMEs?

Such a deisgn would not only difficult to untangle from the current one, but it would break much of the design of input that is avilable now, from the messages on up....

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

josh — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 11:30:37 GMT

That's more what I was thinking. You manually tell it what language to use and the system attaches that information to that particular device. And I'm also thinking of it more as "wouldn't that be a nifty piece of magic" rather than an actual suggestion. :)

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Michael S. Kaplan — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 14:48:31 GMT

Occupational hazard -- ideas brought up here get automatic feasibility assessment. :-)

So the actual thought here is to, rather than split input language per thread and then share all devices among them, split it per device AND per thread, and give device its own input queue....

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Chris — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:02:39 GMT

Woohoo! One of my bug reports has made it into a blog post on one of my favourite blogs... so cool!

Thanks Michael - I really appreciate the extra insight and comments you've made here (and very reassuring compared to the feedback in the bug itself).

Chris.

Gary Bishop » Blog Archive » Cheap Alternative Keyboard?

Gary Bishop » Blog Archive » Cheap Alternative Keyboard? — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:31:04 GMT

PingBack from http://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/~gb/wp/blog/2007/11/04/cheap-alternative-keyboard/

re: The complexities of keyboard layout switching

Nick Fagerlund — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:43:24 GMT

I just got bit by this misbehavior. I switched to the Dvorak keyboard since the last time I tried using Windows, and when my computer ended up in the shop, I ended up sharing an XP box with someone else. I thought I'd just flip the switch whenever it was my turn to use the thing, but I've apparently been spoiled rotten by Mac OS X.

Not only shouldn't assigning different keyboard layouts to every single window be the default, but I'm having a hard time imagining *any* situation where you'd want it to work that way. This is total madness.