Make keyboard gestures processing layout independent

[cyrmax]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Yes, this is a problem for multilingual users.
Now keyboard gestures depend on the currently selected keyboard.
For example, I have English, Hungarian and Russian keyboards.
On English keyboard to perform a left mouse click I press nvda+shift+left_bracket, where left bracket is directly to the right from letter p.
But when I switch to Hungarian keyboard, instead of left bracket to the right of p letter we see a letter ő, and left click gesture doesn't work.
Instead, on the Hungarian keyboard, to type left bracket symbol, I have to press alt_gr+f, so the full gesture would be nvda+shift+alt_gr+f.
On the Russian keyboard we have no square brackets at all. Instead of them we find х and ъ letters (to the right of p or Russian з letter). So, on the Russian keyboard we cannot perform some gestures at all.

Describe the solution you'd like

I offer to make gestures kind of layout independent and handle them so they'd work even when changing the keyboard layout.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Also, as a strange yet working solution it's possible to make a sort of tool which will automatically (with some user input) map gestures for all keyboard layouts present.
For example, you start the tool, you switch to Hungarian, the tool asks you to press a key which on the English layout corresponds to left bracket, tool receives ő letter and adds additional gesture variants for all gestures with this left bracket included.

Additional context

Excuse my English, please.

[CyrilleB79]

On English keyboard to perform a left mouse click I press nvda+shift+left_bracket, where left bracket is directly to the right from letter p.

In English NVDA with laptop keyboard layout, the default gesture to left click is nvda+[ (NVDA + left bracket), without shift. Could you double check this.

But when I switch to Hungarian keyboard, instead of left bracket to the right of p letter we see a letter ő, and left click gesture doesn't work.

If you have NVDA in Hungarian, in laptop mode, and press NVDA+ő, you should get a left click. Don't you?
Instead, on the Hungarian keyboard, to type left bracket symbol, I have to press alt_gr+f, so the full gesture would be nvda+shift+alt_gr+f.

But this has no sense since the bracket is not a main key name.

Describe the solution you'd like

I offer to make gestures kind of layout independent and handle them so they'd work even when changing the keyboard layout.

So do you mean make the gesture only dependant of the position of the key, regardless of the name of the key?
If you do this for all keys, this may lead to other unexpected results. For example,on French keyboard, Q and A are swapped with respect to English keyboard layout, as well as Z and W. It may be quite strange to use NVDA+A to quit NVDA on a French keyboard...
Also, how would you document the gestures if it depends on the current keyboard layout rather than the current language?

I am not saying that it's impossible, but it raises some questions that should be clarified.

[Adriani90]

Actually this is the work of the translators to make sure all the gestures work in their propper language. With a propper translation of the gestures in local keyboard terminology already solves this problem. The key position is not a good indicator for a gesture, because keyboards have also different arrangements of buttons in many cases. And as Cyrille already pointed out, this would introduce a lot of other undesired effects in other languages.

[ABuffEr]

What if we used the scancodes?
They should be software-layout independent, at least in my knowledge.
But it's just an idea...

[Adriani90]

Ofcourse, I see the problem that some keys are not at all on some language keyboard layouts, or you have to press a lot of modifier keys to reach the result you want. But sometimes you have to modify your keyboard layout with a third party application such as powertoys or sharp keys, to get the commands working. Fore example there are many keyboards without page up and page down key, or without home and end key. I have to add these functions on my keyboard via a third party application. This is something that impacts sighted people as well, so I don't think NVDA should be responsible for solving this problem.

[gerald-hartig]

Converting this to a discussion. We would need to explore UX and implementation issues to be able to move forward.