[Localization] [sugar] keyboard bindings for buttons and palettes

[Alexander Dupuy]

Tomeu Vizoso asks:
> Users will switch keyboard layouts frequently? Cannot we just
> translate shortcuts to other characters in the cyrillic or arabic
> Layouts so they are used similarly to the latin one?

I'm not talking about switching keyboard layouts (e.g. using sugar-control-panel) but rather keyboards where the same keycap has both Latin and Cyrillic/Arabic/Nepali/etc. letters - switching between the two alphabets is done with the key under Enter that has multiply and divide sign in the English layout. Users will mostly work with their native alphabet, but will switch to Latin mode occasionally to type foreign names or terms in Latin script, e.g. XO, Cambridge, Negroponte, and bilingual users may switch for much more extended periods.

At a minimum, accelerators should work in the native script mode (and this can be done with localization), but it will be at least mildly annoying if you are in Latin mode and none of the accelerators work without first pressing the "alternate alphabet" key (and pressing it a second time afterwards to go back to Latin mode). That's what I'd like to avoid, but which requires extra support - either allowing a second (hidden) accelerator code, or having the sugar library understand the keyboard layout and support the extra mappings automatically. The latter is more work (and may not be practical for non-XO keyboards), but is easier for activity developers and localizers, and may be necessary in cases where a SCIM is in use.


@alex
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mailto:alex.dupuy at mac.com