[tlug] Ubuntu 14.04 Setup, Keyboard Toggling for Jp-En, Etc

[Lyle H Saxon <llletters@example.com>]

I've been running some test installs of Ubuntu 14.04-LTS and thought
I'd put some of the results in here.

As many of you will remember, I had some trouble getting Japanese text
input going with Ubuntu 12.04 (even when doing a Japanese language
install), so I'm happy to report that on my first try with a Japanese
language install of U14.04-LTS, it actually worked out-of-box (if
that's an acceptable expression).  It automatically had an icon for
English and one for Japanese (in the upper right corner) that you
could toggle back and forth via the mouse.

There was one small (soon to become big) issue though.  The stated
keyboard shortcuts for toggling back and forth between English and
Japanese were non-functional:

Switch to next source using:
Control R

Switch to previous source using:
Shift+Super+Space

So the only way to switch back and forth was via clicking on the upper
right-hand corner icon to go between English and Japanese.  I didn't
think much about that - figuring I'd discover a way to do it with the
keyboard before long.

Fast-forward to test-install #2 (for a friend).

I used the same installation disk and things proceeded normally, until
the update phase after the initial installation.  I stepped away from
the computer for a few minutes and Ubuntu's default password-locked
screensaver kicked in.

And here's where a serious issue arose.  I went to type in the
password and discovered that the computer had switched itself over to
Japanese input.  Since the clickable icon for toggling it was behind
the password-protected screensaver, and the default keyboard shortcuts
didn't work, I couldn't kill the screensaver....

Since I was in the middle of an update, I waited until the hard drive
seemed to have finished working and shut the computer down (which is
doable via mouse on the screensaver page) and restarted it.  It worked
after that, but I noticed there was no icon for English this time.
Apparently there was Japanese and 直接入力 only.  This might be
acceptable, but the automatic Japanese mode for password entry was
certainly not acceptable, so I gave up on that installation and...

Fast-forward to test-install #3

I did an English-language install and found third-party advice on-line
for getting Japanese to work:
http://moritzmolch.com/1453

Basically it's:

Gear-Mark>[System Settings]>[Language Support] > etc.

I did that, and it worked!  But... the computer periodically would
drop into Japanese input mode on its own and all keyboard shortcuts I
tried (to toggle back to English) didn't work, so to prevent getting
locked out again via Japanese input mode for that bloody default
password-protected screen saver, I looked up how to at least turn off
the need for a password for the screensaver and found this:

Ctrl+Alt+T
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false

- which worked fine.

And then I tried changing the keyboard combination to toggle back and
forth from English to Japanese and nothing seemed to work... until I
set it to the old standby [Shift]+[Space] and then it worked.

And... there are some other details, but that's the main part.  It's
working well, but I find it quite irritating that the machine drops
into Japanese input on its own, which Linux has never done to me
before.  It doesn't happen often, but has happened several times since
installation of U14.04.  If there's a setting to stop that evil
behavior, I'd like to know so I can stop it from doing that.

Lyle