From: Michael Leuchtenburg Date: 22:40 on 25 Apr 2006 Subject: Gtk+ keyboard layout handling X has a system to handle keyboard layouts. While it's far from perfect, it functions. If I want to change between two layouts (QWERTY and Dvorak, say, leaving an easy escape to QWERTY for other users of my systems), then I can just bind that to hitting both shift keys at once. Skip forward up the chain to Gtk+. Gtk+ likes to second guess X. If I have both QWERTY and Dvorak available as layouts, it will use the QWERTY keys for all the application shortcuts. Because, after all, Gtk+ knows better than X what the user wants. It's too much to ask it to fucking pay attention to the keyboard change. Dvorak is the default layout? No, no, that doesn't matter. Clearly the user wants to use QWERTY keybindings anyways. After all, everyone uses QWERTY! And Gtk+ shouldn't offer any way to configure it some other way, since it knows what they *really* want. It's not like different users might want different things, after all. Configurability is for wusses, and so is paying attention to what the user configured. SO. MUCH. HATE. Of course, much of this should really be developer-hate, since this is apparently considered to be a feature: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162726 But isn't all software hate really developer hate, in the end?
From: Juerd Date: 00:32 on 26 Apr 2006 Subject: Re: Gtk+ keyboard layout handling Michael Leuchtenburg skribis 2006-04-25 17:40 (-0400): > Of course, much of this should really be developer-hate, since this is > apparently considered to be a feature: > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162726 What... ...the... ...fuck?! I have trouble believing what I read. This actually is a feature. Wonderful. Quoting that page: : Folks, look, That feels like some downtalking is going to happen. : US/Dvorak is a tiny number of users Ahh, it is! : compared to all users of Russian, Arabic, Greek, etc. Why compare? These are distinct groups with distinct wishes. Guess what--you can't abstract everything. Not even in gtk+. : While the feature may seem weird to you, it's really important for : those users." Configurability is a wonderful thing. I wonder how these users (those with the non-roman alphabets) manage to use only gtk+ applications, if this functionality is so important to them. Juerd
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