Input language groups switching windows style

Question

I want to enable one more input language and I wonder is there any way to group similar languages? Suppose I have English, Russian and Ukranian. Russian and Ukranian are similar and it would be convenient to group them. To bind ctrl+shift -- switching between cyrillic and latin groups, alt+shift -- switching inside group between cyrillic languages. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Script to switch to the next language group, or to the next language inside the current group, depending on the argument.

Preparation

1. In a terminal, run:

   gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.input-sources sources
   

   This will output something like (in my case):

   [('xkb', 'us+intl'), ('xkb', 'us'), ('xkb', 'nl'), ('xkb', 'be')]
   

2. Now simply create a file inside your $HOME directory (exactly) named:

   langsets
   

   where you group the languages to your liking. In my example, I will group'us+intl' together with 'us', and 'nl' with 'be'. I group them by their order in the list, which results into a file:

   content of the file ~/home/langsets:

   1 2
   3 4
   

   As you can see, on each line, I put the numbers of the index of the languages, separated by a space (where 1 is the first language in the output list).

   You can set any combination of languages (as long as you don't place languages in multiple groups), and any number of language groups, simply create a new line with indices.

3. The script

   #!/usr/bin/env python3
   import subprocess
   import os
   import sys
   import ast
   
   arg = sys.argv[1]
   
   key = "org.gnome.desktop.input-sources"
   
   f = [f for f in [l.strip().split() for l in open(
       os.path.join(os.environ["HOME"], "langsets")
       ).readlines()] if f]
   
   def get(cmd): return subprocess.check_output(cmd).decode("utf-8")
   
   def execute(cmd):
       subprocess.Popen(cmd)
   
   langs = ast.literal_eval(get(["gsettings", "get", key, "sources"]).strip())
   currlang = str(int(get(["gsettings", "get", key, "current"]).split()[-1].strip())+1)
   
   currgroup = [l for l in f if currlang in l][0]
   
   if arg == "nextcurr":
       currsub = currgroup.index(currlang)
       try:
           nextlang = currgroup[currsub+1]
       except IndexError:
           nextlang = currgroup[0]
       nextlang = str(int(nextlang)-1)
   
   elif arg == "nextgroup":
       try:
           nextlang = f[[i for i, l in enumerate(f) if f[i] == currgroup][0]+1][0]
       except IndexError:
           nextlang = f[0][0]
   
   subprocess.Popen(["gsettings", "set", key, "current", nextlang])
   

4. Copy the script into an empty file, save it as language_set.py

5. Test- run the script with the two commands:

   python3 /path/to/language_set.py nextgroup
   

   an

   python3 /path/to/language_set.py nextcurr
   

   to see if the script (subsequently) moves to the next language group or to the next language in the current group.

6. If all works fine, create two keyboard shortcuts. One to switch to the next group, one to switch inside the current group.

   Choose: System Settings > "Keyboard" > "Shortcuts" > "Custom Shortcuts". Click the "+" and add the commands below.

   1. To change between language groups:

      python3 /path/to/language_set.py nextgroup
      

   2. To change between languages inside a group:

      python3 /path/to/language_set.py nextcurr