Bug#442316: Layout from console-data?

[Rob Andrews <rob@choralone.org>]

Hi all,

I was taking a look at the Ubuntu way of doing things. hal has a policy
script that reads the keymap and options set by the console-setup package. I
thought it was quite a neat way of doing things.

Whilst Debian does have the console-setup package, my guess is that many
users probably stick to the default console-tools package installed as part
of the base.

Would it be acceptable for a hal helper to read the selected values from the
debconf values for console-data? Right now, the easiest way I see (and the
least documented) is to put the keyboard configuration into
/etc/hal/fdi/policy/preferences.fdi, i.e.:

  <!-- gb keyboard layout -->
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keys">
      <merge key="input.xkb.rules" type="string">base</merge>
      <merge key="input.xkb.model" type="string">keyboard</merge>
      <match key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.kernel.name" string="Linux">
        <merge key="input.xkb.model" type="string">evdev</merge>
      </match>
      <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">gb</merge>
      <merge key="input.xkb.variant" type="string" />
    </match>
  </device>

Surely an automatic configuration would be preferred? Would such a helper be
of any use?

rob.

-- 
rob andrews                       :: pgp 0xd6c3e484 :: rob@choralone.org