Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:52:11 +0200 From: Stefan Esser <se@freebsd.org> To: Aleksandr Rybalko <ray@ddteam.net> Cc: "freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Keymap definitions for VT / NEWCONS Message-ID: <53F623BB.3010806@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20140821011729.164752be8fa135baf35ebf9d@ddteam.net> References: <53EA0EC2.2070601@freebsd.org> <53EA1E5A.5020707@FreeBSD.org> <53EA2D00.7010307@freebsd.org> <CAPyFy2DMtFhwosD4z4sVHANB3Bp9_kECNrMWHOH=VpJiPyg2aQ@mail.gmail.com> <53EB0DA0.5000305@freebsd.org> <CAPyFy2BsMzvoYdNiYmRb6RTB_=TzDBoCW7PVETchuNirTJ%2BS2g@mail.gmail.com> <53EBEDC8.3080303@freebsd.org> <CAPyFy2DY20CJA6zc18%2Beie7%2BAm5UOV3ucu4vbirFhwcxgptttg@mail.gmail.com> <53ECA9CE.3070106@freebsd.org> <CAPyFy2B6bqiRnqv5kURUYhcGbtR-NqzUcuLDFntPXH4ChnS0mQ@mail.gmail.com> <53ED2CCE.2030103@freebsd.org> <CAPyFy2D0eUEiWtL-vvdv2P%2BmsEX7P5vkQNguzeZNob7W5QBuwA@mail.gmail.com> <53F1146B.8020906@freebsd.org> <20140821011729.164752be8fa135baf35ebf9d@ddteam.net>
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Am 21.08.2014 um 00:17 schrieb Aleksandr Rybalko: > On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 22:45:31 +0200 > Stefan Esser <se@freebsd.org> wrote: > >> Am 15.08.2014 um 17:30 schrieb Ed Maste: >> This could give us, as examples: >>> >>> be Belgian >>> ca-multi Canadian Multilingual >>> ca-fr French Canadian >>> ch-fr Swiss French >>> ch-de Swiss German >>> us US >> >> Ok, I've been convinced that this is the better scheme than >> the one based on locale names, which I used to prefer. >> >> And if fact, I've only needed one "complex" name: "ch-fr" >> (I chose "ch" instead of "ch-de", since that is the typical >> layout used in Switzerland - I've yet to see a Swiss-French >> keyboard in an actual system ...). >> >> Quite a number of keymaps are still waiting to be verified >> and committed. Many are derived from different encodings that >> should lead to the same Unicode characters, in an ideal world. >> >> I've spent all day on writing the converter scripts (for the >> INDEX.keymaps file and for the keymaps) and verified as many >> results as I could, but there's still a lot of work left ... >> >> Best regards, STefan >> _______________________________________________ >> freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > > Hi guys! > > My very late $0.02. > > We all, who use locale different from 'C' or maybe 'en_US' very long time know > name of our prefered locale (from Xorg apps, from browser charset/locale settings). > And now pair of lang_COUNTRY don't looks something unfamiliar to almost all ppls, > so scheme lang_COUNTRY indeed best. We should just provide good description for > this code on selection - 'en_US (English, USA)'. Hi Aleksandr, you are repeating my arguments for the use of locale names as file names for the keymaps. But as explained in the quoted text above, I have accepted Ed's reasoning, that the keymaps are normally not defined for some language, but by a national standards committee or just history in some country. Therefore, it works to select keyboards by country, and we can all remember country codes (since they are used as top-level domain name parts). ISO language codes, on the other hand are often not obvious and often just slightly different from the corresponding country code. If we were to enforce keymaps that are easily identified with the corresponding locales, I'd still want to have the country first. If I'm a user in e.g. Switzerland, I can just as well work with a Swiss-German layout as with the Swiss-French (just a few keys for accented characters have the shifted and unshifted characters exchanged). Therefore it is useful to have all keymaps for Swiss keyoards starting with the letters "ch" and to have them grouped this way. If I'm looking for a Swiss-Italian keyboard (the locale it_SW exists), then I'll easily see that there is no ch-it, but that I can use the (identical) ch-fr.kbd, or if I have in fact got a Swiss-German layout, that there is a ch.kbd for that case. If you look at the new keymap names, then it is obvious that there are only very few cases where more than one language must be supported (because of language specific layout variants). There are ch.kbd vs. ch-fr.kbd and ca.kbd vs. ca-fr.kbd, only. And it is so much easier to use the country code that you most probably know from your mail or web address, than the locale code, which many users never get to see. If you are using a menu to select your locale, then the keymap can often be guessed from character positions 4 and 5 in the locale name (i.e. locale "ll_CC" --> keymap name: "CC.kbd"). I had been in support of locales for keymap names, myself. But then a number of locales will have no keymap under the name, or we have to provide keymaps under all locale names, that are supported (at least as links to some generic keymap). All in all and after thinking hard for 2 days and nights ;-) the suggestion to use just the country was just too convincing, and renamed all my work files from locale based keymap names tp the country based names, that I have committed to -CURRENT and want to commit to -STABLE real soon now. It is possible to map from locale to country and to suggest the correct keymap for a user, if the locale is known. And when manually configuring the keymap, I do not want to enter the locale, if the 2 letter country code suffices. BTW: I've seen both country and locale based schemes in different operating systems. Seems, that Linux for example uses countries, while Windows uses locale names (DOS had keyboard layout numbers, IIRC, and languages where needed for localized system messages and for the spell checker - both having the language code as the first and most important selector). But keyboards are really more dependent on country standards, than on languages. Multilingual countries (Switzerland, Belgium) use very similar or identical layouts for each language. For example the Belgian-Dutch keyboard (nl_BE) is identical to the Belgian-French keyboard (fr_BE). And de_CH and fr_CH differ just in whether "äöü" or "éàè" are in the unshifted/shifted position. So, I hope you can live with the 2-letter country code names ... Best regards, STefan
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