I speak both French and English, and I very often switch from one keyboard (French Canadian) to another (English US). When I write French emails, the French keyboard becomes necessary for accents (e.g. é, è, à, ç, etc.), while using Vim/writing code is much more practical with the US layout.
The problem is that very often, I start typing, realize I'm using the wrong keyboard layout, and then I have to go delete and re-type what I was doing. This is especially true for Vim, where I can quickly destroy a document in a few keystrokes.
Is there a way to make the current keyboard layout much more obvious than the small bottom-right corner indicator? Are there existing settings in Windows, or software I could install, that could help?
Examples of what I mean when I'm using a specific keyboard layout:
- A colored screen border
- A permanent overlay (modal, popup)
- Changing the taskbar color
- Etc.
Other suggestions that would help reduce lost time using the wrong keyboard layout are appreciated.
Best Answer
This is an alternative that works for me up to now; Using AutoHotkey, I dynamically switch to a preferred language for specific software (E.g. Vim uses en-CA, and Slack uses fr-CA).
This is not an answer to my specific question, but if it worked for me, it might work for other people too:
https://gist.github.com/christianrondeau/00d7cd5848f33e029f00ce2b6b935ab9