In gnome-keyboard-properties, tab Layouts, there are two different mechanisms to set the default layout, depending on the "Separate group for each window" option: - if it is on, the default can be selected by the radio buttons in the default column - if it is off, the default is simply the first one. So we have two styles for the same thing, which can be confusing. Most importantly, this is not mentioned in the help! (Thus I had to spend some time experimenting before I found out how it works.) Some facts which contribute to the confusion: - there are checkboxes which in fact work as radio buttons - when inactive, these checkboxes are shaded, but the shaded frame is hard to notice - when a layout is selected, the checkbox is not shaded, even though it cannot be changed
Hey, would you mind filing this upstream?
Filed bug 466711 upstream at bugzilla.gnome.org
Hi Stepan, bug 466711 was closed with the following response: You got it actually wrong. If none of the layouts is the default one, there is no default layout. Let me explain. First of all, default layout only works when you have 'separate layout per each window' checked (otherwise these radios are disabled). Suppose, you have layouts 'us' and 'ru'. First scenario: you have default 'us'. It means when you create new window (any window), it has layout 'us', regardless of what was your layout a millisecond ago. Same thing if you have default layout 'ru' - it would be the layout for any new window. Sure you can switch layouts as usual. If there is NO default layout, new window gets whatever was the layout millisecond ago. It just uses the current layout - no layout switching is performed. May be, it is incorrectly explained in the docs - but that how it is supposed to work.
Hello Ray, sorry for the delay, and thank you for pushing this upstream; I comment there.