IBus UI review

[Matthias Clasen]

Not sure if this is the correct place to send this, but I'll send it
here anyway (please tell me if there's a better place).

I've recently installed ibus in order to get some impression of how our
new im framework will integrate in the desktop. While playing with it, I
took some notes, that I'd like to share.


Matthias 

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Status icon

- The tooltip "IBus - Running" is pretty pointless less and should be
removed until there is something useful to say

- There is no way to switch back to "no input method" from the status
icon. I have to press Ctrl-space to go back. Maybe add an "None" entry
at the bottom of the menu ?


Toolbar

- Why do input methods seem to fancy these weird undecorated floating
toolbars ? Does it add anything that is not already present in the
status icon ? 

- If we can't drop it, can there at least be a way to turn it off ?

- The toolbar seems useless if "focus-follows-mouse" is turned on, since
it becomes inactive on focus out. This also affects the status icon.

Menus

- What is the plan, going forward, wrt to im-chooser ? I'd hate to have
2 input method related menuitems in the default install. My preference
would be to not install the im-chooser by default, since it is only
needed to switch back to 'legacy' frameworks.

- It would be great if we could use the generic "Input Method" menuitem
for the ibus preferences, and maybe rename im-chooser to "Input Method
Framework" or something like that.

- Alternatively, if we can't get rid of im-chooser by default, maybe
ibus-setup should not have its own menu item (I notice that scim-setup
doesn't have one either), since it is available via im-chooser.

- There is a mismatch between the menuitem and the ibus-setup window,
both the window title and icon don't match the menu, as they should.


Preferences, General tab

- "Aauto start IBus on session login" is very techno babble. Can we make
that something like "Enable Input Methods" ? I don't think there is any
need to talk about sessions and autostart here.

- Keyboard shortcuts: I would love to see these moved to the keyboard
shortcuts capplet, which has support for handling application-defined
shortcuts. As a bonus, you get automatic conflict handling. The one
restriction is that currently, only one key-combination per action is
possible. If having multiple is essential, you could either split it
into "Trigger", "Alternative Trigger", "Second Alternative Trigger", or
file a bug and I'll look into enabling multiple shortcuts per action in
the keybinding capplet

- "UI" is a bad section label. How about "Fonts & Style" instead ? Even
better would be to split it into two sections, a la

Input Window
      Lookup table orientation:  [Vertical]
  [ ] Use the system font
       Input Window Font:  [Sans 10]

Language Bar
  [ ] Show language bar
  [ ] Hide language bar when it is not needed


Preferences, Engine tab

- "Engine" is a technical term that is not really helpful here. How
about "Languages" instead ?

- There are some icons missing in the combo box, e.g Telugu-apple,
Telugu-rts, Marathi-phonetic, Marathi-itrans...

- The main list needs to repeat the language name (like the status icon
menu already does) otherwise it is not clear if "phonetic" is Oriya or
Marathi.


Preferences, About tab

This should not be done as a tab, it is very much against the style of
our preference tools. There is already an About menu item on the status
icon. If you absolutely want to have an "About" in the preferences, it
should be a left-aligned "About" button in the action area that brings
up an about dialog. But I'd really just get rid of it.