Re: How can we change the keyboard layout?
On Tue, 2024-02-06 at 21:43 -0600, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 06 Feb 2024 at 11:28:11 (+0100), hw wrote:
> > [...]
> > I'm talking about wayland all the time; you brought Xorg up instead.
>
> If that concerned you unduly, you could have put that in the Subject
> line.
It doesn't concern me.
> It's also obvious that "change the keyboard layout" is ambiguous,
> and you didn't intend to mean switching between two layouts.
It's not at all obvious, and it's not really ambiguous. Changing the
keyboard layout has always been about changing the keybaord layout and
never about switching between different keyboards or between different
layouts. That only came up much later when such a feature was added
to some so-called desktop environments, and it's a very short sighted
feature since it omits a way of changing they keyboard layouts, which
is a far more important feature.
> > [...]
> My 2014 keyboard appears to identify itself correctly as a K520. My
> old IBM M says it's an "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard", which seems
> reasonable for a keyboard dating from 1988.
I can see USB keyboards identifying themselves, but keyboards with
PS/2 or DIN connectors? How does your keyboard from 1988 connect?
> In 26 years, the number of keys has increased considerably, from 102
> to 107, plus six audiovisual buttons. Two of the extra keys are
> shifting ones (win and fn).
10% more keys isn't considerably more. Can you show me a keyboard
with 122 keys that has all keys usable and unique rather than sending
key combinations instead?
> > We're still trying to figure out keyboards manually. Instead of
> > improvements, we now have come so far that we even can't do that at
> > all now.
>
> I'm guessing that criticism is specific to wayland.
No, it's about keyboards and computers. Can you show me a keyboard
that you can plug in and have working with the correct keyboard layout
so that every key does what it is supposed to do without any
configuration required?
I haven't seen one yet. You still need to pick a keyboard in a Debian
or Fedora installer because it can't figure out for what language the
keyboard is, how many keys it has and whatever else may be necessary.
When you log into a GUI like gnome, you still need to pick the
keyboard layout in case you connected a different keyboard after the
installation.
I can connect a German keyboard instead of the currently connected US
one and neither the console nor gnome would adjust to that. That one
keyboard identifies itself as 'foo' and the other one as 'bar' doesn't
make a difference.
I could connect both at the same time. What do you think what happens
when I press the same key on either, like the = key for example? I
haven't tried it yet but I'm sure that pressing = on the German
keyboard will give some other character instead of =. How can that
be?
Do you see in the gnome settings multiple keyboards displayed when you
connect multiple keyboards at the same time so you can at least pick a
layout for each one manually?
> > [...]
> > It is. Apparently nobody wants to maintain it anymore, and Fedora
> > seems to have plans to omit it entirely for next release (which is
> > like 4 months away). And it makes perfect sense to omit it.
>
> I haven't seen a reference for this. I have seen references
> that say something quite different.
About Xorg being no longer maintained or about Fedora dropping it?
What are those references?
I've only found that apparently one person wanted to see some features
in Xorg and decided to work on it after it was declared abandoned and
that it is still on the way out. It seems it's only a matter of time.
> > I'm sure others will follow. It's only that an up to it's date Debian
> > is already outdated so badly that you can't even get an AMD graphics
> > card to work which was released a year ago. Maybe that's why Debian
> > users haven't noticed yet.
> >
> > Already 20 years ago Debian was so outdated that I had to run testing
> > even on servers, and that's one of the reasons why I'm very reluctant
> > to use it for servers now. Unfortunately, that leaves no good
> > alternative for servers.
>
> I can't make heads or tails of this. I don't know whether you have
> some unique problems with running Debian: you certainly seem to have
> an awful lot of them.
I've described my experience and I can't help it when you can't
understand what I'm saying and draw conclusions out of what you don't
understand.
Reply to: