How to keep 4 or more keyboard layouts?

Question

I use XUbuntu 12.04. How can I keep 4 layouts without a need to cycle through them every time? Are there comamnds to send to plugin and change the layout to a particular one?

I'd like to organize them like this:

• Russian and US Dvorak in a cycle
• Spanish Dvorak and Portuguese Dvorak to switch to with a key

Answer 1

I don't know about the applet, but you can always change your layout with a command:

setxkbmap -layout ru
setxkbmap -layout us -variant dvorak
setxkbmap -layout es -variant dvorak

To solve your problem, you can assign shortcuts or application launchers to these commands. However, you will be circumventing the applet, which will revert to the default keyboard after each restart or even screen lock.