Re: Bug#230832: xserver-xfree86: XkbVariant was fi, kb not working in X
Remove Branden from CC list and replace by debian-x....I think it's
important that the X Strike Force is informed of issues related to
installed X environment on fresh installs.
(keyboard variant automagically set to "fi" on a fresh install in Finnish)
> This has probably been done by the localization-config package which is
s/probably/certainly
So you were right in reassigning this bug,
Frans. The problem is now : is this a bug or a feature ? :-)
> run as part of base-config. It's function is to preconfigure some
> packages (selected settings) based on the language/country the user
> selected.
>
> However, it should of course never set values leading to a broken
> configuration.
Well, the problem here is determining if the configuration *is* broken
or not.
On of localization-config (maintained by Konstantinos Margaritis)
goals is trying to give a solution to a very common problem with fresh
installs in localized environments:
As soon as the user has a non US keyboard, (s)he configured it
properly in the kbd-chooser part of d-i, but afterwards, when
installing X (often through the "desktop" task of tasksel), the
keyboard still used a "us" layout.
This was mostly due to the kbd layout question being medium priority
in X packages, so it was skipped during the install.
We (d-i team) had tons of reports with users not understanding why
they has a US layout in X while they did choose another layout during
the install.
localization-config tries to circumvent this by installing "safe"
defaults based on the localisation environment. So, in Tapio's case,
as the install was probably done in Finnish, the X keyboard layout was
set to "fi".
Konstantinos explicitely asked (in -i18n, IIRC) for input about the
best mapping, so I guess that using "fi" when the language is Finnish
was suggested to him by a Finnish contributor.
One may argue that mapping keyboard layout to language is not
perfect. For sure, having a way to deduct the correct X mapping from
the console-data settings would be far better.
Alastair McKinstry, console-data maintainer, has already mentioned he
wants to re-work console-* packages for this, but post-sarge.
So, for sarge, it seems that localization-config is the best
compromise for giving to the majority of our users a wroking
environment.
For sure, those users who have chosen a US keyboard layout but ran the
install by choosing their own language and do the install at default
priority will end up in the problem described by Tapio.
Additionnal notes after reading the full bug log:
-the original bug submitter mentions problems with *Swedish* keyboard
layout (having "sv" there while it should be "se")
*That* cannot have anything to do with Debian Installer and/or
localization-config. l-c preseeds
xserver-xfree86/config/inputdevice/keyboard/layout to "se" when the
locale is sv_SE (Swedish in Sweden) and "fi" when the locale is sv_FI
'Swedish in Finland)
Anyway, at the time this report was written, localization-config
didn't even exist. D-i, in February 2004, did nothing at all with
regards to X keyboard settings
-there is another problem reported by Tapio Lehtonen. That one seems
to be what I describe above. Tapio installed his system in Finnish,
then configures X. Given the date (Nov. 27th), localization-config
is definitely the responsible for putting "fi" in
xserver-xfree86/config/inputdevice/keyboard/layout and this is a
feature.
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