Bug#630575: Icelandic Dvorak keyboard layout isn't there either
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 12:55, Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> wrote:
> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, le Mon 05 Mar 2012 12:36:40 +0100, a écrit :
>> I must say I find this annoying as well, the Icelandic Dvorak Keyboard
>> layout is also missing, so my installation of Debian always goes like
>> this:
>>
>> 1. I choose "Dvorak"
>
> Why not just choosing Icelandic? (which is already selected by default)
>
>> 2. I can't type my real name when I create a user, I type "whatever" instead
>> 3. I'm limited in the passwords I can pick
>
> You'd then be able to type your real name and not be limited.
Because that's Icelandic *qwerty*. Which is completely different than
Icelandic Dvorak.
If I picked that it would take me 2-3x as long to install the system
since every time I wanted to type something I'd have to hunt-and-peck
type instead of touch-type.
To see what that's like, if you happen to use QWERTY, try installing
the system with a Dvorak keyboard.
>> I hadn't bothered with looking into whether this was a
>> debian-installer bug before, I just assumed that it was an issue in
>> the layout not being available.
>
> As said in first answer to the bug, this is on purpose, to avoid a
> profusion of choices in the list of keymaps, to keep installing Debian
> as simple as possible. We assume that people who know dvorak also know
> the traditional layout and will be able to change the layout afterwards
> by dpkg-reconfigure-ing keyboard-configuration.
>
>> I think a much better way to deal with this would be to have a way to
>> collapse these options. So when you select e.g. "Norwegian" you get a
>> second dialog where you can select the keyboard type, i.e. standard,
>> dvorak etc.
>
> Which was precisely rejected because it'd confuse users which don't know
> what "dvorak" is.
>
>> Or just list them all, the "region and language" dialog in GNOME does
>> so and users don't get too confused by that.
>
> Experience showed they do. And that would carry a lot of translations,
> making d-i bigger and unusable in small platforms.
This bug is really not about Dvorak, but about the d-i offering only
an arbitrary subset of the keyboard layout that a full Debian system
offers.
E.g. it doesn't offer Colemak at all either which means that anyone
used to that layout would also have a really hard time installing the
system, even if they didn't need to type non-ASCII characters.
Anyway, you seem to be making several distinct points here:
1. That this couldn't be made to work from a UI point of view.
I don't think this is true at all. The Ubuntu installer, which I
find much simpler than Debian's (even though I prefer Debian when
it comes to the end result) allows you to select all the keyboard
layouts you get on post-installation. Here's Debian's:
CLI: http://i.imgur.com/zPSvv.png
GUI: http://i.imgur.com/TjoYU.png
And Ubuntu's:
http://i.imgur.com/CCsCw.png
Ubuntu just selects the most common option, but allows you to
change it if you want to. The d-i could do the same thing with
another dialog box.
Even if all of this was hidden under some top-level "Other" box
users such as myself would be able to select it.
This is exactly how the timezone dialog works already, there's a
*lot* of timezones, and the d-i manages that complexity without
excluding some rare timezones and having users update
/etc/timezone after installation.
2. That the translations would get bigger
I very much doubt that, especially since most of the translations
of the descriptions are basically all repetitions,
i.e. "$language_name ($variant)".
But if that were true having it untranslated under some optional
menu would still allow the user to select it.
3. That some experience has showed that the Region & Language dialog
in GNOME is too complex, what experience exactly?
Anyway, I'm not very interested in winning some argument about this on
a bug tracker.
The reason I commented here was that I was going to patch the d-i to
allow me to select arbitrary keyboard layouts, but I noticed this bug,
and I'm not interested in spending time on it if it's just going to
get Wontfix'd.
Dealing with this is a PITA for me when I install Debian, but having
to maintain a fork of the d-i and create custom CD images from it
would be an even bigger PITA.
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