Package: src:gnome-control-center
Version: 1:43.1-2
X-Debian-CC: gunna...@debian.org

Hello!

This upstream MR:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/merge_requests/910

improves the Special Character Entry section in Settings -> Keyboard. Ubuntu applies patches with the three commits in that MR. The patches would apply in Debian, and I would like to find out the interest in adding them to debian/master as a preparation for Debian 12.

First and foremost there is this very small patch:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-Allow-disabling-alternate-characters-key.patch

Currently, by just opening the "Alternate Characters Key" window (maybe out of curiosity), you add lv3:ralt_switch to xkb-options. If you have a European keyboard layout, that particular value is probably set via the layout anyway, and in that case you may not even notice. But if you have for instance the "English (US)" or "Russian" layout, you may find that your Right Alt key no longer works as expected. And on top of that: The UI offers no way to change it back. The issue is similar to this upstream one:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/918

keyboard-Allow-disabling-alternate-characters-key.patch adds a switch to enable/disable the thing, and personally I think we should apply that patch in debian/master.

Then we have two more patches:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-For-xkb-options-have-Layout-default-toggle-and-N.patch

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-Avoid-modifying-xkb-options-when-user-changes-n.patch

In short they make the "Alternate Characters Key" control smarter. A "None" option is added, and if you pick some other key but "Right Alt" to serve as the "Alternate Characters Key", "Right Alt" is automatically turned into a regular "Alt" key.

A problem is that one of the two latter patches adds some translatable strings: "Layout default", "Use layout default" and "None". So if we would choose to improve the functionality using those patches, we would end up with some strings shown untranslated in the UI for now, since the upstream MR !910 has not been merged yet.

It would of course be best if some GNOME dev could merge !910, so the new strings are passed to the GNOME translators. I don't know how to make that happen, though. Issue #918 was submitted almost 3 years ago.

Let me know what you think.

--
Cheers,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson

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