11/02/13 13:00, Alan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My keyboard layout in Tails changes all the times, I though randomly.
> But I recently discovered where it comes from: there is a custom
> keyboard shortcut in Tails to change keyboard layout, which is ALT+MAJ.
> Unfortunately, it conflicts with two standard GNOME keyboard shortcuts:
> ALT+MAJ+TAB which changes window backwards and ALT+MAJ+ARROW which
> moves active window to another desktop.
This was introduced by this commit (which apparently missed the
Alt+Shift+Tab shortcut, or it was added after that time):
commit 6a3183316e3548d119cc1bf6f43d8ec64eb77c32
Author: Tails developers <amnesia@???>
Date: Thu Dec 8 15:12:54 2011 +0100
Add Alt+Shift shortcut to switch keyboard layout.
This is the default layout switching shortcut used in Windows, which
probably is what people are used to. Note that this causes a layout
switch to occur for other keyboard shortcuts using Alt and Shift,
which is annoying. In Tails this currently only accects the
Shift+Ctrl+Alt+<arrows> shortcuts for moving the selected window to
another virtual deskop, so this is IMHO acceptible.
> I propose to remove this conflicting keyboard shortcuts. I see two
> options:
>
> - either we just remove the shortcut to change keyboard layout (I don't
> know anybody using it as a feature) ;
Such a shortcut is essential for users of layouts with non-latin-based
alphabets (e.g. Russian) as they frequently use it for switching to
English for entering URL:s, etc and then switching back again.
> - or we map it to something else, e.g. ALT+CAPSLOCK which is the first
> choice proposed by GNOME "Key(s) to change layout" preferences dialog.
That'd be non-obvious for users with a primarily Windows-background,
which I assume is a large portion of our users. Even if we'd document
such a (dare I say?) "non-standard" shortcut the few users that'd
actually read it would be betrayed by their muscle memory all the time.
> What do you think?
The best would be if we could configure GNOME (or whatever) to only
trigger the shortcut when Alt+Shift is *released* so it could co-exist
with overlapping shortcuts. Short of that, I strongly believe we should
not alter the layout switching shortcut; I strongly believe the amount
of annoyance caused by doing so far exceeds the current annoyance caused
by the issue you describe.
Cheers!
