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Wayfire 0.8

wayfire.org

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Re: Wayfire 0.8

#11
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That is not an acceptable way to treat the issue. It’s one thing to say you don’t the time & cycles, but it’s another to WONTFIX it twice with a clear usability problem.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

Presumably, if one replaced their physical keyboard with one with a different layout, then change the layout to match in software, then the binding would still apply to the same "physical key location"?

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#12
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That is not an acceptable way to treat the issue. It’s one thing to say you don’t the time & cycles, but it’s another to WONTFIX it twice with a clear usability problem.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

> do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

As a colemak user, definitely. It's a super weird and confusing experience otherwise and this bug is a blocker for me checking out your (otherwise quite promising-looking) project.

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

Presumably, if one replaced their physical keyboard with one with a different layout, then change the layout to match in software, then the binding would still apply to the same "physical key location"?

Bindings respond to a particular hardware key code. If you have a qwerty keyboard, when you press the key labeled as 'Q', the keyboard sends a `KEY_Q`. If you take a different physical device, `KEY_Q` will probably be reported for the key where `Q` is written on the new keyboard.

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#14
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That is not an acceptable way to treat the issue. It’s one thing to say you don’t the time & cycles, but it’s another to WONTFIX it twice with a clear usability problem.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

> Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

That's what actually happens everywhere. For instance undo is usually CTRL+Z. On QWERTY that will be CTRL + the key at the left side of the X, and on AZERTY that will be CTRL+the key at the left side of the E. Therefore, that's the behavior people expect and it has advantages. Having to write KEY_Z to actually have KEY_W is also jarring and very counter-intuitive. That also means UIs don't have to translate key bindings, unless they want them to correspond to some word (for instance word processors have CTRL+B for bold in English, but CTRL+G is allowed in French (Bold = Gras).

Now I also understand the benefits of your choice, and I appreciate that nobody is entitled to make you change this in any case. At worse everybody should be thankful for your choice to release this work as open source and spend time on it to the benefit of everyone. I'm also not a user so I don't have any stake in this.

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

> do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts? As a colemak user, definitely. It's a super weird and confusing experience otherwise and this bug is a blocker for me checking out your (otherwise quite promising-looking) project.

Wait, so you use both colemak and the normal qwerty layout and switch between them on the same keyboard?

As a vim user, I am hugely relying on muscle memory - which is why saying that bindings should vary between layouts seems really weird, as that would make muscle memory way less effective. Then again, that is my usage ..

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#16
post #14
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

> Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts? That's what actually happens everywhere. For instance undo is usually CTRL+Z. On QWERTY that will be CTRL + the key at the left side of the X, and on AZERTY that will be CTRL+the key at the left side of the E. Therefore, that's the behavior people expect and it has advantages. Having to write KEY_Z to actually have KEY_W is also…

I am mostly trying to understand what people actually use. I hate exactly this thing in most applications: ctrl-z doesn't work when I use the german layout (usually I use qwerty/us), and assumed most people would dislike it as well...

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#17
post #16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts? That's what actually happens everywhere. For instance undo is usually CTRL+Z. On QWERTY that will be CTRL + the key at the left side of the X, and on AZERTY that will be CTRL+the key at the left side of the E. Therefore, that's the behavior people expect and it has advantages. Having to write KEY_Z to actually have KEY_W is also…

I am mostly trying to understand what people actually use. I hate exactly this thing in most applications: ctrl-z doesn't work when I use the german layout (usually I use qwerty/us), and assumed most people would dislike it as well...

If someone ever does a survey, I'd be interested to read a blog post on this :-)

In my case I'm not sure what I prefer. When switching from AZERTY to QWERTY, I'm lost because the keybindings are not the same. Especially that CTRL+Z "becomes" CTRL+W which kills the current tab, and CTRL+W "becomes" CTRL+Q which kills the app.

OTOH, I don't usually switch layouts, and like that the configuration file / the UI matches the current layout.

I guess the conf could allow setting layout-specific keybindings. It complicates things quite a bit though.

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#18
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That is not an acceptable way to treat the issue. It’s one thing to say you don’t the time & cycles, but it’s another to WONTFIX it twice with a clear usability problem.

As the maintainer of Wayfire, I would like to say why I don't consider this a critical issue: the current system allows you to bind actions to a particular physical key. So, no matter what physical keyboard layout and actual layout in software, with the current system, you can bind the action to the desired physical key. Or do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts?

As another non-QWERTY user, I usually want desktop keybindings (excluding games) to follow layout changes, because I'm remembering the function by the mnemonic. Most applications have this behavior on my existing FDO/Linux system. On the Windows machine I use sometimes, by contrast, it seems like holding Control effectively forces QWERTY, which has been an unending source of little pains. If I didn't already have the QWERTY keymap memorized and I had to figure out which keys were “actually” which to configure things, it would be a lot harder.

But then, I'm an X user still; I'd like to dip into Wayland, but a combination of fragmentation of protocols and the seeming relative “hardness” of the stack in terms of customizability have caused me to hesitate thus far. And maybe that Windows behavior also means that's what you want to mimic for a lot of other people?

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#19
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do people actually want their keybindings to change when they change their layouts? As a colemak user, definitely. It's a super weird and confusing experience otherwise and this bug is a blocker for me checking out your (otherwise quite promising-looking) project.

Wait, so you use both colemak and the normal qwerty layout and switch between them on the same keyboard? As a vim user, I am hugely relying on muscle memory - which is why saying that bindings should vary between layouts seems really weird, as that would make muscle memory way less effective. Then again, that is my usage ..

It's kind of hard to explain, but I think my brain doesn't go "letter -> key on keyboard", it goes "letter -> location in keyboard layout -> key on keyboard".

If the key on keyboard stays the same, even though the layout changes, it really messes with the way my brain maps from letters to muscle movements, idk if this makes sense.

Re: Wayfire 0.8

#20
> The purpose of workspace sets is to have a dedicated set of normal workspaces for different activities the user does on their computer. For example, I have one workspace set (containing a 2x2 workspace grid) dedicated to Wayfire, where I have Wayfire’s source code, GitHub issues, wlroots, etc. There is another workspace set dedicated to a project I am working on for university, and so on. Of course, a similar effect could be achieved with a single bigger workspace grid, but having a 5x5 workspace grid quickly becomes difficult to navigate.

I've wanted this for 7 years

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