GNOME Keyboard Layout Shifter applet

14 May 2010 By Hugo Buddelmeijer 13625

A small project of mine: A better applet to select (and see!) what keyboard layout you are using in your GNOME session: KeyboardLayoutShifter-0.1.tgz.

I spend more time on writing this page than on the applet itself, so use at your own risk :).

Default keyboard layout indicator

The current GNOME keyboard layout indicator has some problems:

  • In gnome-terminal ctrl- keystrokes are taken from the first layout in the list.
    So if you use two or more layouts, you should rearange the order every time you want to switch.
  • It doesn't actually indicate which layout you use. I've got two layouts, dvorak and US international. Both list as 'USA', which makes the 'indicator' aspect useless.

The GNOME/gtk community seems to be divided about these issues, and it might not be fixed soon.

The Keyboard Layout Shifter

I have thought about learning how to make a panel applet before, and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. So I put together a small python applet that cycles ('shifts') through the list of layouts listed in gconf. The used one is always on the top so you can use your ctrl- keystrokes. Plus, it actually shows you what layout you have chosen!

Installing

There are three files in the tarball, that you have to copy manualy.

  • GNOME_KeyboardLayoutShifter_Factory.server contains the definition of the applet and goes into /usr/lib/bonobo/servers
  • KeyboardLayoutShifter.py is the actual program and goes into /usr/local/bin
  • KeyboardLayoutShifter.txt is this text file.

Just put the 2 files in the tarball in their respective positions, add the applet somewhere, and you're good to go! Like

tar -xzvf KeyboardLayoutShifter-0.1.tar.gz
cd KeyboardLayoutShifter-0.1
sudo cp -avi GNOME_KeyboardLayoutShifter_Factory.server /usr/lib/bonobo/servers
sudo cp -avi KeyboardLayoutShifter.py /usr/local/bin

Or you can try out the applet by running the python script (with -d).

Acknowledgements

I never had made a GNOME applet before, let alone a slightly useful one. The blog posts of these two people helped me on my way. Actually, you could say it is just a mashup of their examples :).

Nice sidenote: Originally I just edited the HinduScroller that presented random english-hindu words every 10 seconds but in such a way that it changed my keyboard layout every 10 seconds :(.

Issues

The applet kinda works. Good enough. For me. YMMV. Will vary. Feel free to pick up these points, I probably will not take the time to fix them.

  • It doesn't collaborate with the regular keyboard switcher. Ensure that that one is set to use the first layout and do not touch it again.
  • Being just a button, you could not move it. So I added a widget with my initials that you can right-click on. It looks kinda ugly as well.
  • ..