Bug#1032388: gnome-shell: fails to switch keyboard layout from topbar menu

[Simon McVittie]

Control: forwarded -1 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2626

On Sun, 05 Mar 2023 at 18:23:06 +0100, Todor Tsankov wrote:
> Since a recent update, switching keyboard layouts from the menu in the
> topbar (clicking the language symbol in the topbar and choosing a
> keyboard layout) does not work any more, i.e., the action has no effect.
> Switching layouts works fine with the keyboard shortcut as well as with
> the mouse in the overview.
> 
> I have the option "Switch input sources individually for each window"
> set to "on"

This seems to be a particularly bad version of
<https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2626> (the same root cause
as #1031945). Because you're using a per-window input source choice,
losing window focus invalidates the action you were trying to do.

The changes from upstream merge request !2878 seem to fix this, and will be
in mutter 43.3-5, 44.rc, and hopefully also 43.4.

> Another related problem is that if the current window and the overview
> are using different keyboard layouts, the animation for switching to the
> overview visibly stutters.

Please open a separate bug for this if it still persists after #1032388 is
fixed, and is significant enough to be worthwhile to track.

I'm unlikely to work on solving minor performance/framerate issues myself
(I'm already trying to fix too many things!) but other GNOME team members
are welcome to look into it.

    smcv