Comment 8 for bug 940927

Hi,

With my IME Packaging Team's hat on, using any simple key combination from two (and some of three) of ctrl, alt shift and space is risky for input methods, as they are widely used for different actions.

In IBus, for instance:
ctrl+space - activating/deactivating the framework
ctrl+shift - switching among the input method engines, left for normal order, right for reverse order
left shift - switch between target language and English
right shift - reverse mapping queries
ctrl+, - single character mode
ctrl+. - switch between English punctuation and target language punctuation
ctrl+/ - direct submit mode
ctrl+’ - input statistics
... and more

And for Fcitx, the one we probably push to default in coming years, have an even larger set of keyboard shortcuts, and have the flexibility of setting customized keyboard shortcuts very easily (think about setting shortcuts in gnome-terminal).

In conclusion, shortcut should be a design task, and should be carefully to avoid conflicts. Actually HUD's shortcut has kept many CJK users away from Unity. They have chosen either GS or the classic mode, which has better support for various input methods (shortcuts, D-Bus based UI, and other compatibility problems).