Bug#691666: installation-reports: please propose french bépo keyboard layout during installation

[Fred <fboiteux@free.fr>]

[Sorry for the delay, I was too busy on other subjects]

Le dim. 28 oct. 2012 15:19:11 CET,
Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> a écrit :

> Did you read the discussion there?

I re-read it more carefully and better understood your point of view,
sorry for the too quick last answer !
 
> ...
> > we can also build it
> > dynamically from Xorg definitions using console-setup and xkb-data
> > (these packages are already in the
> > debian-wheezy-DI-b3-amd64-i386-netinst.iso),
> 
> That won't work for a network installation, for which you'd have to
> type things before getting access to these packages.

Ok, I missed this use case.
 
> > From my understand of debian-installer, these keyboard layouts are
> > stored in the initrd.gz, isn't it ? but I didn't find exactly
> > where).
> 
> They are, from the console-setup-pc-ekmap package, but also the
> layout translations in console-setup-udeb.

ok.

> > On the contrary, doing the Debian system installation without the
> > correct keyboard mapping turns this operation more difficult
> 
> We have still not been convinced by that.  Is there really *no* azerty
> keyboard near you that you could just plug or look at?  Doubling the
> number of choices and adding several hundred KiBs (thus posing size
> issues) just for that issue still seems too costly.

I understand the argument about adding hundred of KiBs for « less
frequent » keyboards isn't wished. Meanwhile, it would be nice to have
some support for them, at least a limited one, like :
- using an option at boot to ask for having more keyboard models choice
(like with « expert » installer mode)
- and be able to actually have these more choices only when the data is
available (in the ISO for example).
Could it be a possible solution ?

Having the wrong keyboard model is often a annoying problem when
installing a new Debian system (for example virtual machines in QEMU) or
when trying to test/debug Debian installer or report bugs. It would be
really nice to have possibility to select the right keyboard layout
anyway !
The Bépo layout isn't targeted especially for geeks or computer
scientists, and I know some friends using it without much Linux
knowledge... They could install Ubuntu but not Debian for that
problem...
 
	Regards,
		Fred.