RFE: change language/layout from onboard window

[Norbert]

I have two keyboard layouts - "English (US)" and "Russian". With hardware keyboard I switch between them via Alt+Shift.
If I click this keys in onboard window nothing happens.
May you add a special button for changing language in onboard window? It may be a globe like in Android.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Thanks for the bug report. Both would be good to have. Would you mind filing a separate bug report for the language button?

Alt+anything is difficult to send for a screen keyboard, because Window managers snatch Alt+mouse click for window handling (movement, etc.). I just realized there may be a way around this, though. Confirming for now.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

In the Options dialog, you can set Ubuntu to switch the keyboard map with key combinations not including the Alt modifier. You could for example, set it to switch when Caps Lock and Shift are pressed.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

I meant the Options dialog of the Keyboard Layout panel in the System Settings.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Thank you, Francesco. I'll try.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

I tried to set Win keys as layout switch with no luck.

But I got success after editing onboard layout file and set RWIN and LWIN keycodes to 133.
So the full solution is:
1. Open Options dialog of the Keyboard Layout panel in the System Settings.
2. Set 'Key(s) to change layout' to 'Left Win' and 'RIght Win'.
3. Edit onboard layout file - set RWIN and LWIN keycodes to 133 (or extract .onboard from attachment and select My layout in onboard preferences).

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Cool that you figured that out. I've switched most modifiers to keycodes already for bug #1065480. The only one left not sending actual key presses is Alt.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Alt key combinations now send key presses too. I've verified that Alt+Shift does switch the keyboard layout (group). Some other Alt key combinations still do nothing, but most appear to work.

That said, Norbert, you may still want to stick to your workaround. Alt-Shift takes 5 clicks to perform with a pointer device and I don't see how this can be significantly reduced. It's easier to press with multi-touch on a touch screen, though.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

I'll split this bug in two. I'll consider this bug to be about Alt-Shift and mark it as committed. For the button part I've opened new bug #1080578.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

The fix is available in the alpha 1 preview release of Onboard 0.99.0. Thus, I am marking this bug as Fix Released. Please, do not hesitate to reopen it or file a new bug if this problem is still an issue for you.

onboard (0.99.0~alpha1~tr1190-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  * New upstream alpha release. (LP: #1089396)
    + Fix Onboard becoming empty when system font dpi changes

 -- Francesco Fumanti <email address hidden> Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:33:43 +0100

onboard (0.99.0~alpha1~tr1188-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  * Sponsorship request for Ubuntu Raring (LP: #1089396)
  * debian/control: raise virtkey run dependency to 0.63.0 or above
  * debian/patches: refresh patch and change default theme
  * Onboard requires now virtkey >= 0.63.0
  * Add example file with system defaults for the nexus7
  * Various changes to get acceptable speeds on the nexus7 (LP: #1070760)
  * Add docking feature (LP: #405034)
  * Add sliding feature for docking and auto-repositioning
  * Add multitouch support
  * Add a toggle to stop listening to touch events in case of many problems
  * Add popup on long press for key variants like diacritics
  * New option to choose popup vs repeat for keys with variants
  * New gsettings key for the popup delay
  * Make move, frame and touch handles work on the nexus7
  * Perform simulated clicks on correct touch position
  * Auto-release pointer grab after timeout in case nexus7 is unresponsive
  * Fix xserver memory leaking
  * Improve speed when typing and moving the pointer (LP: #1055448)
  * Fix rendering being slowed by emboss effect on keycaps (LP: #890221)
  * Fix for not being able to move/resize Onboard on touchscreens (LP: #959035)
  * Have Onboard respect launcher icon size (LP: #1078554)
  * Auto-show Onboard by clicking already selected text entries (LP: #1078602)
  * Make default shortcut for language/layout work from Onboard (LP: #1078629)
  * New design of the Preferences dialog with more options (LP: #1053496)
  * Disable click buttons when mousetweaks is not installed
  * Add D-Bus service to show and hide the keyboard (LP: 1032042)
  * Don't export dbus service for embedded instances
  * Set NumLock's default sticky behavior to LOCK_ONLY
  * Keep state of NumLock across restarts
  * New attribute in layout files for sticky key behaviour
  * New layout tags key_template and keysym_rule defining keysym-specific labels
  * New window tag for color schemes to define border of popups
  * New layout tag for language specific overrides in the layouts
  * Move common key definitions into template for import by layout files
  * Sync modifier states of Onboard with changes by hardware keyboard or tools
  * Fix keys not re-rendered when releasing latched modifiers (LP: #1069990)
  * Send key strokes for all modifiers (LP: #1067797)
  * Blacklist Ctrl-LAlt+Fn keys by default
  * Add alternative key generation by at-spi2
  * Try to improve struts handling for metacity and mutter
  * Fix getpreferredencoding hack, by Matthias Klose
  * Build for all python3 versions, by Matthias Klose
  * Add work arounds for some problems with the search box of firefox
  * Improve startup sequence to fix Onboard showing up so...

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Is it possible to backport these fixes to Precise and Quantal?
These releases are not in EOL stage.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

The alpha 1 release of Onboard 0.99.0 is available in our Onboard Releases PPA for precise and quantal:
https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/stable

You also have to activate the PPA for the Virtkey Releases, as the alpha 1 release of Onboard 0.99.0 needs an updated virtkey.
https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/virtkey-stable

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Thank you! I'll try.