Re: Review of console-setup wrt D-I [very long]
On Sunday 28 June 2009, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> I know the situation. What I'm talking about is this:
> > 3) Both Dutch keymaps and American English keymaps are in use, but
> > the Dutch ones are a relatively small minority.
> > 4) If one of the variants currently listed under "Netherlands" really
> > is the American English layout then that is absolutely not
> > obvious. I would *NEVER* have understood that from the current
> > descriptions.
>
> That's why it I prompted for choosing a correct naming for the upstream
> bug report above.
I would just call it the "American English" layout versus the "Dutch"
layout. After all, that's what they are.
And you'd probably need to offer some additional choices:
- American English layout with € on 5 key
- American English layout with € on E key
- American English layout with right-Alt key as compose
- US International layout (with right-Alt key as AltGr)
But as I said in my previous mail, that would depend on what is actually
in circulation and what people are used to in Windows. I just don't know.
> > 2) "Origin" as question sucks majorly.
>
> The problem is: how should things be called? kbd-chooser used to just
> throw one list at the user. It used to not be so big, but that's not a
> scalable solution, as there _are_ a lot of different keyboards. Maybe
> we can clean some variants out (like all the dvorak variants which
> double the number of variants), but that still leaves a long list.
The variant question is actually not be that bad, especially if you'd omit
all the variants that are not even included in the initrd (such as the
sun, atari and amiga ones). And if you'd then split out Dvorak as well,
you'd really be going somewhere.
> Here, "Origin" means where you bought the keyboard, it is a quite clear
> question, provided that there is a US variant listed in the different
> layouts for countries which usually sell it.
>
> Another way I had thought about would be to first show a list of all
> the keyboards known to be used by the combination of country/language
> given at the localechooser stage, for instance en_CA would just propose
> the american layout while the fr_CA would just propose the canadian
> layout. And a choice like "not in this list", which brings to a second
> list with all the keyboards known to be used in the country (i.e. the
> "Origin" question is not asked, it just defaults to the localechooser
> country). Again a "not in this list" choice would bring to a third list
> with a list of layouts for all countries, but with a lot of variants
> removed (e.g. legacy, dvorak). Eventually, a "not in this list" would
> bring to a fourth list with really all the variants.
Now _that_ I could understand. The origin question should really only be
displayed if someone chooses "other" from the country-specific variant
list. Just as we do in localechooser for languages with shortlists: you
get the shortlist by default, but if you want to choose a country that's
not in the shortlist you can.
And note that I spent quite some time on localechooser for Lenny to break
the "full country list" up into first a selection by continent and then
by country. And I'd really hate to see us have *two* sets of dialogs that
basically ask to select a country. That would really be a waste of
memory. So, can we maybe factor that out of localechooser in such a way
that the continent/country templates can be reused in c-s? Now *that*
would be integrating c-s properly into D-I...
BTW, I would expect there are people in NL using Dvorak, but it's not
being offered as a choice there...
Anyway, I still stand by my comment that the _current_ implementation in
c-s is a major usability regression.
> > 5) Dutch people very much *do* still type accented characters.
>
> ERrr, really? That's not what dutch people I've talked with told
> me. Anyway, that's not the question at stake.
See these pages from a Dutch on-line newspaper:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/4270616/__Strengere_controle_op_prive-gebruik_zakenauto__.html?p=40,1
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/4270520/__Belgisch_pardon_voor_illegalen__.html?p=40,2
They have: privé, België
Or google for "reeen" (should be "reeën"; plural for deer) with language
set to Dutch.
I'll believe you if people say they don't bother in informal emails or
SMS, but ask them if they also don't bother when writing an application
for a job... Also ask them what gets taught in schools today.
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