Bug#630575: Icelandic Dvorak keyboard layout isn't there either
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, le Mon 05 Mar 2012 18:34:47 +0100, a écrit :
> 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.
It is understood that it's completely different, just like all dvorak
layouts.
> 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.
That much? The d-i team assumed that anybody who knows a dvorak layout
would know the traditional layout too, even if a bit less trained to it.
> To see what that's like, if you happen to use QWERTY, try installing
> the system with a Dvorak keyboard.
Which to our knowledge is far from comparable: there are way less dvorak
keyboards on sale than qwerty keyboards. In the common shops in the
countries I have visited, it's a 0 ratio.
> > 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.
Which is on purpose. As has been discussed at lengths on debian-boot, in
a lot of cases showing all the choices is really just spurious. For the
french layout for instance, there is a dozen variants, from which the
average user will have no idea what to choose, while the "standard" one
will just fit anybody who ever worked with any french keyboards.
The subset is definitely *not* completely arbitrary, it is a careful
selection. For cases that do matter, d-i does include the variants
which can be useful, and only those that are known to be well-known in
the area, e.g. Kurdish and Turkish F vs Q layout, or bulgarian phonetic
layout. If the dvorak layout is really so much spread in Iceland that
people really miss the choice, then it can be proposed for addition, but
the debian-boot discussions ended up on not providing dvorak layouts,
and the (US) "Dvorak" choice currently proposed is actually questioned.
> 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.
Same answer as above: we believe that people who know Colemak are able
to type with qwerty.
> 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.
Which is precisely what was initially done, and was rejected because
there are a lot of just useless choices for a mere installation.
> Even if all of this was hidden under some top-level "Other" box
> users such as myself would be able to select it.
That brings down to to point 2.
> 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.
Yes, because the user will usually know what to answer. In the case
of keyboard layouts, they often don't. See the monster "Review of
console-setup wrt D-I [very long]" thread, starting at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2009/06/msg00759.html
> 2. That the translations would get bigger
>
> I very much doubt that,
Never doubt before seeing numbers. xkb-data's 39 .mo files amount to
2.2MiB (about 56KiB each). The translation of the d-i answers amounts
to about 5KiB for each translation, ending up with about 2MiB saving,
which is huge by d-i standards.
BTW, dropping the actual non-standard layouts also brings pc105.ekmap
from 1MiB down to 300KiB. Again a precious saving for d-i.
> especially since most of the translations
> of the descriptions are basically all repetitions,
> i.e. "$language_name ($variant)".
Yes, that compresses well, but still.
> But if that were true having it untranslated under some optional
> menu would still allow the user to select it.
Untranslated, but in which language? Certainly not english. The
supposed language for the keyboard will not necessarily suit either.
> 3. That some experience has showed that the Region & Language dialog
> in GNOME is too complex, what experience exactly?
Years of d-i support.
> Anyway, I'm not very interested in winning some argument about this on
> a bug tracker.
Well, that'd still be the only way to get your point through, because
discussion has already happened at lengths on debian-boot@, and I'm here
just exposing the rationale which explains the "wontfix".
> Dealing with this is a PITA for me when I install Debian
Again, this is very surprising to us that not being able to select an
icelandic dvorak would be so much a pita. Aren't all the usual computers
in Iceland using non-dvorak anyway?
Samuel
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