bumblebee-status: Layout module doesn't handle multiple layouts properly

I’m currently using bumblebee with the following Xorg configuration:

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "system-keyboard"
        MatchIsKeyboard "on"
        Option "XkbLayout" "us,ara"
        Option "XkbVariant" ",qwerty_digits"
        Option "XkbOptions" "caps:swapescape"
EndSection

The layout module shows as follows:

Imgur

It should detect and display the active layout(s) and allow switching between them as is the case in gnome-panel, for example.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 7 years ago
Comments: 30 (16 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

[modules] Add layout-xkb using xkbgroup to display current layout Package xkbgroup as "thirdparty", because it was slightly patched for python2.x compatibility. see #177 — committed to tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status by tobi-wan-kenobi 7 years ago
[modules/layout-xkb] Use set-xkbmap to switch layouts Use the data retrieved via xkb and set the new layouts and variants using set-xkbmap. see #177 — committed to tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status by tobi-wan-kenobi 7 years ago
[modules/layout-xkb] Parameter to show full layout name If parameter "showname" is specified, do not show the symbol (e.g. "us"), but the full layout name (e.g. "English (US)"). see #177 — committed to tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status by tobi-wan-kenobi 7 years ago
[modules/xkbgroup] Remove thirdparty xkb, use system xkb Providing a custom-built xkb module obviously doesn't really work, so use the system one instead. see #177 — committed to tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status by tobi-wan-kenobi 7 years ago
[modules/layout-xkb] Gracefully handle missing xkbgroup library Show "n/a" is xkbgroup is not installed/available see #177 — committed to tobi-wan-kenobi/bumblebee-status by tobi-wan-kenobi 7 years ago

Most upvoted comments

@mahmoudhossam @tobi-wan-kenobi xkbgroup 0.2.0 released, please check it out!

hcpl on Oct 6, 2017

I just spent some time playing around with this issue.

What happened in my setup is that by using this line exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap -layout "fr,us,ru" -option "grp:alt_shift_toggle" in my .config/i3/config, when I switch the layout, the keymap changes but the setxkbmap -query still gives out the layout fr,us,ru.

I solved this locally by creating a script that changes the layout (fr,us,ru then us,ru,fr, etc…) instead of using the option grp:alt_shift_toggle above. And I use:

exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap -layout "fr,us,ru"
bindsym $mod2+space exec "~/Documents/i3/change_layout.sh"

where change layout is:

#!/bin/bash
arr_layouts=$(setxkbmap -query | grep "^layout:" | sed "s/layout:\s *\([a-z,]*\)/\1/g")
IFS="," read -a arr_layouts <<< $arr_layouts
n_layouts=${#arr_layouts[@]}
new_layout=$(for ((i=1; i<=$n_layouts-1; i++)); do printf ${arr_layouts[$i]}","; done)${arr_layouts[0]}
setxkbmap $new_layout

I’m sorry I don’t have a more thorough insight on this. Is there a better solution ?

RobinVogel on Jan 30, 2019

@mahmoudhossam I fully agree, the current implementation seems a safe choice now.

tobi-wan-kenobi on Oct 6, 2017

Glad to hear it (finally) works!

Yeah, that would be the short-term solution. Mid-term, I hope that there will be a xkbgroup release on PIP that 1. supports Python 2.7 and 2. works with missing cfree().

Thanks & have a nice day!

tobi-wan-kenobi on Oct 1, 2017

Update: I’m not neglecting this issue, I can now call the libX11 library from Python and just need to find the time to figure out how to query the layouts.

tobi-wan-kenobi on Sep 29, 2017