Input Methods BOF

We will be discussing issues on the current status of keyboard layouts and input methods handling in GNOME and plans for handling input under Wayland.

Topics

• Wayland

  • ibus and gtk patches

  • xkb layouts (keymaps abstraction/API?)

  • on-screen keyboard - Caribou

• UI/Design issues
  • xkb layout labelling (language vs country)

  • IME guidelines (colours, etc)

  • Candidate lists ugly
• Predictive input
• IBus problems
  • xkb handling
  • performance issues
  • restart needed after adding an IME
• Allan's GNOME IME UI guidelines useful: some progress but still need some more implementation work

Minutes

13 people attended (including Jens Petersen, Rui Matos, Michael Hasselmann, Daiki Ueno, Owen Taylor, Keith Packard, Allan Day, Mike Fabian, Anish Patil)

• Wayland IM
  • Daiki et al reviewing the ibus patch
  • Rui said he could help to review the gtk patch
  • GNOME 3.10 will just be "best effort" with Wayland input-method protocol support with increasing support in 3.12 and ongoing
    • xwayland/gtk X immodule support may be sufficient for 3.10 but input-method protocol should hopefully at least be testable in some form even if not default in Wayland environment (Owen/Rui etc)
  • Short discussion on improving abstracting the handling of keyboard maps (less write-only) and keymap switching and resetting required when changing to/from certain IMEs
    • probably a lot of it can be handled by gnome but really we need better keymap meta-data (langtable may help) for a agnostic solution
• Discussion on Predictive input and OSK
  • UI for OSK case seems fairly obvious
  • for physical keyboard, Allan suggested timeout before for displaying candidates might help/be less intrusive say
  • would like to have accents etc on long press for also for physical keyboard input
• UI issues
  • suggestion to change GNOME labelling of keyboard layouts from language code to country code did not get much agreement
  • candidates list UI - Rui also thought older grey design was nicer than current black "boxes"
• ibus problems
  • touched on idea for a lighter cross-platform IME abstraction to replace ibus