Switching between more than two keyboards unnecessarily difficult

Bug #1520889 reported by Matthew Exon
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Canonical System Image
Confirmed
Wishlist
Bill Filler
Ubuntu UX
Triaged
Medium
Femma
ubuntu-keyboard (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I have three keyboards installed - "English", "Chinese - Pinyin" and "Emoji". Three might be considered a lot except that emoji is on a separate keyboard and everyone needs emoji, so this would affect any bilingual user.

Simply tapping the globe icon on the keyboard will never allow you to select all three, it just toggles between the last two used. You have to long press, then locate the keyboard entry you want, then tap it.

The irritating thing is that I usually switch between English and Chinese, so a single tap mostly works. Unless I inserted an emoji, in which case it switches to that instead. So switching to Chinese often involves:

* tap globe icon
* notice it's wrong
* long press globe icon
* select Chinese

But then, I want to re-establish English as my next favourite option, so before I actually type:

* long press globe icon
* select English
* tap globe icon (to switch back to Chinese)

...and now I can type my Chinese, if I can even remember what I wanted to say after all of that.

Most other keyboards just cycle through all the keyboards, and that's what a single tap should do here.

I can imagine a better, if complicated system. Imagine if instead of a menu, long pressing brought up a constellation surrounding the globe button. Say my keyboards are English, German, Chinese and Emoji:

     DE ZH
       \ /
 EN --- o --- Em

Once I'd learned the layout, I could switch to any layout I want by swiping from the globe in the appropriate direction.

description: updated
description: updated
description: updated
Changed in canonical-devices-system-image:
assignee: nobody → Bill Filler (bfiller)
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in ubuntu-ux:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Medium
assignee: nobody → Femma (femma)
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