Comment 5 for bug 958102

There is an option in Keyboard Layout settings that can partially fix it - If you choose "Allow different layouts for individual windows" then the dash can always be in english (for starting programs) and will stay in english even if different applications are in other keyboard layouts. But there is still a problem if you want to search files in the dash and switch to another keyboard layout.

From what I saw in Windows 7 - the default option is for different layouts for individual windows and I couldn't see a way to change that. I think it might be a more sensible default for ubuntu too because otherwise windows users might get frustrated from the ubuntu default behaviour.

In google search they do have the expected behaviour, for example, the following is a search for "testing keyboard layout problem" but typing in hebrew keyboard layout:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%D7%90%D7%A7%D7%93%D7%90%D7%9F%D7%9E%D7%A2%20%D7%9C%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%9D%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%92%20%D7%9A%D7%A9%D7%98%D7%9D%D7%95%D7%90%20%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%9D%D7%A0%D7%9A%D7%A7%D7%A6
google detects the wrong keyboard layout and shows result for the english layout.

Google might do it using their language translation servers which might not be feasible for unity but I think it can be done using the user's keyboard layouts. Something like this:

* User does a search in unity's dash - if there are no results (or maybe even if there are results?)
* dash loops over the user's other keyboard layouts
* for each layout - converts the search term to that layout
* search using that layout - if there are results for a layout - show the results (or add to existing results)