Ayatana Design

It's difficult for the user to know the current state of capslock, or if they've accidentally enabled it

Bug #638654 reported by Elazar Leibovich
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Application Indicators
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
Ayatana Design
New
Undecided
Unassigned
Indicator Applet
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
One Hundred Papercuts
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
xserver-xorg-input-keyboard (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When I'm setting the capslock key to switch between keyboard layouts in the Ubuntu Preferences->Keyboard->Layout->Options->Keys-to-change-layout, I'm also implicitly setting the "shift+capslock" key to switch the "Real" capslock state of the keyboard.

Users who don't know that might press "shift+capslock" by accident, and then will be stuck with capslock on.

There should be a clear notification in the spirit of "You chose capslock to switch between keyboard layouts. This means that now shift+capslock would turn the capslock state on and off", after the user chose "capslock" as the key to switch keyboard layouts.

Revision history for this message
Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I think the core issue here is that there is no mechanism by which the user can easily know the state of the capslock. I think the following solutions would rectify this:

- Notify the user via an Application Indicator that the capslock has either been enabled of disabled.
- Have an icon appear in the panel when the capclock has been enabled, in the same way that the key icon appears when root privileges have been given.

Also, since this is a feature request, I am invalidating this as a paper cut.

Changed in hundredpapercuts:
status: New → Invalid
summary: - Notify user that shift-capslock changes capslock state when using it to
- switch keyboard layout
+ It's difficult for the user to know the current state of capslock, or if
+ they've accidentally enabled it
Revision history for this message
Ted Gould (ted) wrote :

There isn't anything that needs to be done in indicator-applet or indicator-application to support this. Marking as invalid for those projects.

Changed in indicator-application:
status: New → Invalid
Changed in indicator-applet:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Elazar Leibovich (elazarl) wrote :

It is very relevant for the keyboard option (you can get to them by right clicking the indicator application), where it should clearly state something like "Warning, setting capslock to switch keyboard layouts will make shift+Capslock to turn on the capslock".

So please add it as relevant to the keyboard layout preferences.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Zanchetta (primes2h) wrote :

This is a nice solution for this issue:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/indicator-keylock-ubuntu/

It would be great to have it by default.

Revision history for this message
Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton) wrote :

not a driver bug.

Changed in xserver-xorg-input-keyboard (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
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