significātiō: keyboard layout indication done differently
I am used to the US keyboard layout. It’s very convenient for normal work (programming…), but from time to time I write something in Czech and have to switch to the Czech layout. And disasters start happening. With the Czech layout, I am able to produce typos and other mistakes at enviable rate. Most of them happen when I forget which layout is active at the moment. The small text indicator on the GNOME panel can be overlooked too easily.
So I have written a small tool that continuously reminds me of the active layout. significātiō is a small daemon that changes the color of window shadows whenever the keyboard layout is switched. The US layout looks normal…
…whereas the Czech layout is indicated by eerie red glow :-)
I don’t regard significātiō as a project in its own right; rather as a simple hack. It isn’t very configurable and it expects working D-Bus and Compiz with Window Decoration plug-in. If you decide to use the program, you might need to tinker with the code a little. However, significātiō isn’t limited to indicating Czech layout; you can monitor any layout you want simply by passing an appropriate argument.
Available at my projects website, MIT license.
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