Keyboard switching

[Sergey Udaltsov]

Edward,

> will need to allow for countries that use three or more scripts
> routinely, for students of history, religion, and other subjects
> involving historical source documents, and especially for students of
> languages.
FYI, X does not allow to have more than 4 groups in one configuration.
If you need more - you have to reconfigure XKB. In 99% it is not an
issue - but I know there are multilingual people who are unhappy about
it. They have to use some workarounds.

> Mongolia would like traditional Mongol alphabet, Cyrillic, and Latin,
> and possibly Chinese. Certainly if we include Inner Mongolia. Plus
> Buddhist languages, including Sanskrit and Tibetan.
Do they need all these scripts in one configuration?

> China has more than 50 legally-recognized minorities, several with
> their own writing systems (Tibetan, Mongolian, Uighur, Yi).
Do you know many people who would use all these writing system at once?

In general, I'd tend to agree to your point that changing keyboard
configuration should be more accessible than it is now. At the very
least, it should be properly documented and explained. Probably,
simple GUI configuration should be available for that task (by
"simple" I mean it should not necessarily expose all powers of XKB
configuration machinery). Bernardo, I think you concern about making
the device screwed by choosing fancy layout is a bit of exageration -
there is always touchpad which could be used to find the "restore
default" button.

Cheers,

Sergey