This is an outstanding issue in Unity:
The code below has been updated, now it can use icons to show state. But it may get slow sometime as I has to update icon file on hard drive then reload it again. (See notes about this issue/limitation in libappindicator
)
A well packaged release was made available on webupd8 ppa (Thanks goes to Alin Andrei /Andrew/)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-xkbmod
Reference: Keyboard Modifiers State indicator For Ubuntu: Xkbmod Indicator
Original Answer:
This is not attended to be a canonical answer to the question. It could be counted as a work around. Hopping someone writes sophisticated solution for it.
This a simple prototype keyboard modifiers indicator for Unity.
Image starting from left: Icon, Shift, Locked Caps, Ctrl, Alt, Super, Locked AltGr
(Small circle to indicate locked state)
Source file unity-xkbmod.c
:
/*
* unity-xkbmod.c
*
* Copyright 2014 Sneetsher <sneetsher@localhost>
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,
* MA 02110-1301, USA.
*
*
*/
#include <string.h>
#include <X11/XKBlib.h>
#include <glib/gprintf.h>
#include <gtk/gtk.h>
#include <libappindicator/app-indicator.h>
//callback data structure
typedef struct _AppData {
Display *_display;
int *_deviceId;
AppIndicator *indicator;
} AppData;
//menu ui
static GtkActionEntry entries[] = {
{ "Quit", "application-exit", "_Quit", "<control>Q",
"Exit the application", G_CALLBACK (gtk_main_quit) },
};
static guint n_entries = G_N_ELEMENTS (entries);
static const gchar *ui_info =
"<ui>"
" <popup name='IndicatorPopup'>"
" <menuitem action='Quit' />"
" </popup>"
"</ui>";
//callback function, get xkb state, update indicator label (icon have limitation)
static gboolean update_xkb_state (gpointer data)
{
//get xkb state
XkbStateRec xkbState;
XkbGetState(((AppData*) data)->_display, *(((AppData*) data)->_deviceId), &xkbState);
//construct label
GString *label = g_string_new("");
register int i;
unsigned bit;
//loop taken from xkbwatch source
for (i = XkbNumModifiers - 1, bit = 0x80; i >= 0; i--, bit >>= 1)
{
//printf("base%d %s ", i, (xkbState.base_mods & bit) ? "on " : "off");
//printf("latched%d %s ", i, (xkbState.latched_mods & bit) ? "on " : "off");
//printf("locked%d %s ", i, (xkbState.locked_mods & bit) ? "on " : "off");
//printf("effective%d %s ", i, (xkbState.mods & bit) ? "on " : "off");
//printf("compat%d %s\n", i, (xkbState.compat_state & bit) ? "on " : "off");
//todo: change constant with xkb modifier constant (defined in the headers)
// show effective modifier stat
switch (i)
{
case 7:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⎇" : ""));
break;
case 6:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⌘" : ""));
break;
case 5:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "5" : ""));
break;
case 4:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "①" : ""));
break;
case 3:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⌥" : ""));
break;
case 2:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⋀" : ""));
break;
case 1:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⇬" : ""));
break;
case 0:
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.mods & bit) ? "⇧" : ""));
break;
default:
break;
};
// show if modifier is locked
g_string_prepend (label, ((xkbState.locked_mods & bit) ? " ˳" : " "));
}
//g_string_prepend (label, "");
app_indicator_set_label (((AppData*) data)->indicator, label->str, NULL);
//g_free(label);
return TRUE;
}
int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
AppData appdata;
Display *_display;
int _deviceId;
char* displayName = strdup("");
int eventCode;
int errorReturn;
int major = XkbMajorVersion;
int minor = XkbMinorVersion;;
int reasonReturn;
AppIndicator *indicator;
GtkWidget *indicator_menu;
GtkUIManager *uim;
GtkActionGroup *action_group;
GError *error = NULL;
gtk_init (&argc, &argv);
XkbIgnoreExtension(False);
g_printf("Xkb client lib ver: %d.%d\n" , major , minor );
_display = XkbOpenDisplay(displayName, &eventCode, &errorReturn,
&major, &minor, &reasonReturn);
g_printf("Xkb server lib ver: %d.%d\n" , major , minor );
if (reasonReturn != XkbOD_Success)
{
g_printf("Unable to open display!\n");
return 1;
}
XkbDescRec* kbdDescPtr = XkbAllocKeyboard();
if (kbdDescPtr == NULL)
{
g_printf ("Failed to get keyboard description.\n");
return 2;
}
kbdDescPtr->dpy = _display;
_deviceId = kbdDescPtr->device_spec;
/*
//no need for event listener, used gtk_timeout timer
XkbSelectEventDetails(_display, XkbUseCoreKbd, XkbStateNotify,
XkbAllStateComponentsMask, XkbGroupStateMask);
*/
action_group = gtk_action_group_new ("AppActions");
gtk_action_group_add_actions (action_group, entries, n_entries, NULL);
indicator = app_indicator_new_with_path (
"Simple XKB Modifier Indicator",
"icon",
APP_INDICATOR_CATEGORY_HARDWARE,
g_get_current_dir());
uim = gtk_ui_manager_new ();
gtk_ui_manager_insert_action_group (uim, action_group, 0);
if (!gtk_ui_manager_add_ui_from_string (uim, ui_info, -1, &error))
{
g_printf ("Failed to build menus: %s\n", error->message);
g_error_free (error);
error = NULL;
return 3;
}
indicator_menu = gtk_ui_manager_get_widget (uim, "/ui/IndicatorPopup");
app_indicator_set_menu (indicator, GTK_MENU (indicator_menu));
app_indicator_set_status (indicator, APP_INDICATOR_STATUS_ACTIVE);
//app_indicator_set_label (indicator, " ⇧ ⋀ ⌥ ⎇ ⌘ ", NULL);
//symbols: shift U21E7 ctrl U22C0 alt/altgr U2325 U2387 cmd U2318
//from font: DejaVu Sans
appdata._display = _display;
appdata._deviceId = &_deviceId;
appdata.indicator = indicator;
gtk_timeout_add (120, (GtkFunction) update_xkb_state, &appdata);
//nice for realtime tasks, to replace gtk_timeout
//gtk_idle_add ((GtkFunction) idle_func, &appdata);
gtk_main ();
XCloseDisplay (_display);
return 0;
}
Installing needed headers/libs: (Not sure if I miss any)
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libappindicator-dev libgtk2.0-dev
Compiling:
gcc -Wall unity-xkbmod.c -o unity-xkbmod `pkg-config --cflags --libs appindicator-0.1` -lX11
Run:
./unity-xkbmod
Note:
libappindicator
used for Unity indicators lack an important feature which make easy to ports other desktops indicators. See Bug #812067
API needed: pixbuf icon setting support
Without this feature, let's say we need (Shift, Ctrl, Alt, AltGr, Super) with sticky keys active; we have 3 main status for each (Off, On/Latched, Locked). So 3^5 combined icons should be generated. (Where normal case just 3x5 single icons)
That's why I used indicator label with symbols from DejaVu Sans font.
To put an icon, place it in same folder and name it icon.*
. Accepted formats: png, svg, ico, xpm ...
If you don't like any icon, just create a 1x1 px image instead.
References:
Best Answer
You can divide the Unity launcher's items in application launchers and other items; network related, mounted volumes and such. The best is to only copy the application launchers to other users, since the other ones can be user specific and / or vary during the process.
Also note that if you copy a launcher's content to another user, possible local .desktop files (in
~/.local/share/applications
) of locally installed applications for example, will not appear in the other user's Unity launcher.Reading the current launcher's content
Having said that, you can read the current launcher's content by the command:
The output is a list of all items from your current Unity launcher.
Setting a new launcher's content
To set a new content for the launcher, the following command is used:
Using a script to copy the launcher to another user's account
If we use a script to fetch the launcher items of the first user, write the result to a file, then log into the another user's account to run the script again (together with the file) to set the content into other user's account, it can be done in no time. The script below is made to do both, depending on the argument you give it (see further below).
How to use
copy_launcher.py
Open a terminal window in the "model user's" account, and run the script with the command:
The
get
-argument of the command makes the script create a text file:saved_launcher.txt
, with the content of your current Unity launcher. The file is created in the same directory as where the script is located.saved_launcher.txt
file on (for example) an usb stick, but keep both files together in one and the same directory.Log into other user's account, open a terminal and run the script by the command:
(mind the set argument)
The script
If you're done, you copied the Unity launcher from one user to another.