Comment 1 for bug 1428146

The appearance of the layout button was not specified in detail originally. <http://goo.gl/IjLpHs> It was described vaguely as a "button labelled with current language or an icon indicator" (well, which?), and shown as "ENG" in a wireframe. ("ENG" isn't a keyboard layout; English has multiple keyboard layouts.) This error wasn't caught when the spec was reviewed, either.

Meanwhile, Simon Xenitellis on ubuntu-devel-discuss@ has made a couple of mockups of how the layout might be shown, but they're a bit cramped. <https://i.imgur.com/3468iBV.png> <https://i.imgur.com/x3CAvpm.png> Solving the problem solely with the layout button would involve two competing needs: communicating the current layout, and making the button easily findable across layouts. For example, many emoji and currency symbols involve a combination of letter-like symbols, which could make the layout switcher hard to find if it showed just the code of the current layout. Conversely, the U+1F310 emoji is quite similar to the current globe image on the button.