- What is InputSwitcher?
InputSwitcher is an utility software to save the input source state of each window on Leopard. It cannot work on Tiger or below.
- How to Install
You need SIMBL at first. Please download it from the url and install it:
And copy these files as well.
- InputSwitcher.app -> /Applications
- InputSwitcherClient.bundle -> ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
Then you start InputSwitcher.app and restart other applications, it will be working. You can see it saves the input source states as pushing cmd+space or cmd+option+space on each application and move the focus to the other applications.
- How to Uninstall
Remove the login item for InputSwitcher in [System Preferences] -> [Accounts] -> [Login Items].
And delete these files.
- /Applications/InputSwitcher.app
- ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/InputSwitcherClient.bundle
Then stop InputSwitcher.app on ActitivyMonitor. That's all.
- How It Works
On Leopard, it doesn't save the input source state of each window any more. For example, if you changed the input source for Japanese on an application, and you moved to another application, the input source remains Japanese. In another word, the input source state becomes a global state on Leopard.
InputSwitcherClient.bundle gets into each application process via SIMBL to notify their activate and deactivate events to InputSwitcher.app.
InputSwitcher.app remembers the input source states of all applications. When it receives an activate event, it restores the previous input source state. For an deactive event, it saves the input source state.
Therefore all applications can keep the input source state even on Leopard.
Due to the current implementation, there are several constraints.
It works only on Cocoa applications. So applications listed below woundn't work.
- Finder
- Thunderbird
- iTunes
But for such a kind of applications, InputSwitcher saves the global state and apply it to them. So it should not be a problem ordinally.
Especially Thunderbird seems to have a problem. Sometimes it locks the input source state after changing the input source state on activate. Therefore InputSwitcher doesn't restore the input source state only when the focus moved to Thunderbird from other applications. It's a workaround for Thunderbird.
*** Please send your bug report to Apple
The root cause of this problem is that Apple removed the feature from Leopard. That's the problem.
InputSwitcher fairly works well, but in some cases it doesn't work. I tried to make it always working better, but it could not be perfect.
Please send your bug report to Apple Bug Reporter to put the feature back. The more Apple receives bug reports, the easier the developers in Apple can decide to do it.
- The Author
Satoshi Nakagawa http://limechat.net/psychs/ #limechat on irc.freenode.net
- License
The MIT License
Copyright (c) 2007 Satoshi Nakagawa
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.