Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 07:33:39PM -0400, Yannick Gingras wrote: Blaise Alleyne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmmm, well, I'm Canadian, but I have and have always had a US English keyboard. I think in this specific case, the Canadian layout may only be relevant for Quebec (i.e. English/French keyboards). I may be wrong, but I've never used anything but a US English keyboard in Toronto. That is indeed a more of a problem in Québec since it's impossible to type French with the US layout. I'm curious; won't the majority of people needing this (particularly those whose names require it) select French as their installation language? I appreciate that you didn't, but it does seem like a good heuristic. And, after all, it's only a default. Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Colin Watson wrote: I'm curious; won't the majority of people needing this (particularly those whose names require it) select French as their installation language? I appreciate that you didn't, but it does seem like a good heuristic. It is quite likely that someone who prefers to operate in English (and for whom English may be a first language) will find themselves required to write a majority of text/email/documents in French in francophone Canada (which is not exclusively Quebec, nor even tightly defined along political boundaries). While this may not directly influence keyboard selection, I would expect that these people may find a keyboard layout optimised for entry in French to be preferable to one not so optimised (I certainly do in a parallel case, although mine is a less common use case than English speakers in francophone Canada). Note that this becomes more interesting as a common default as many devices with integrated keyboards available in the shop (e.g. laptops) may have this layout as a default, especially given the legal requirement that products optimised for French be promoted over products optimised for English in some provinces (e.g. Quebec (1)). 1: http://www.olf.gouv.qc.ca/english/infoguides/selling/selling.html -- Emmet HIKORY -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That is indeed a more of a problem in Québec since it's impossible to type French with the US layout. I'm curious; won't the majority of people needing this (particularly those whose names require it) select French as their installation language? I appreciate that you didn't, but it does seem like a good heuristic. There are several good reasons to install your distribution in English but as soon as you need to write any French, the US layout is unusable. Native french speakers are fairly good in English around here: we are so exposed to English, there is no way around it. I install in English because I like English: it's a nice efficient language with a lot of quirky shortcuts and visceral expressiveness. Others do it because translations are really not that good: you see applications with half of the menus in French and half in English; you get error messages like une erreur fatale s'est produite: no space left on device; various technical terms are translated differently by different people, like the ubiquitous email that people in France translate to MEL and that people in Québec translate to courriel. Also, it's much easier to get support if your applications are spitting out error messages in English: you can google the messages and you have a much higher probability of hitting a forum somewhere. In other words, the French version of Ubuntu kind of sucks. I know installing your environment in a secondary language can feel strange to a native English speaker; he would probably see no logical reason to suddenly decide to work in, say, Polish. However, the language you end up using really has not much to do with the order in which you learned languages, or the subset of Unicode required to write your name: we end up using what is most efficient. Now you might wonder why we so desperately want to be able to write French. That's another story but let's just say that different subjects call for different languages. And, after all, it's only a default. Don't get me wrong. The situation is not a show stopper, I was just wondering if we could make the already extremely intuitive installer even better. Sincères salutations, -- Yannick Gingras -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:57:48AM -0400, Yannick Gingras wrote: I just installed Kubuntu Hardy. I selected my location, Montreal, and only a few clicks later I had to pick a keyboard which defaulted to US. Since it knows where I live at this point, shouldn't the installer default to Canadian layout? I think that this is related to ticked 37138 but I'm not sure because it seem to focus on locales while the keymap is mostly locale independent. The keymap *is* selected based on location. However, a compatriot of yours requested that we should select a US keyboard by default for English-speaking Canadians, and a Canadian keyboard by default for French-speaking Canadians. That's what the installer implements. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/console-setup/+bug/64418 That is a really interesting point of view. However, allow me to develop since language identity is really important for our little group of francophones lost on a continent of English speakers. Simon Law, the bug reporter whom happen to live in Montréal not too far from my place, pointed out that in here, English speakers use the US layout while French speakers use the French Canadian one. Simon is primarily an English speaker and I suspect that he doesn't write a lot of French. My primary language on the other hand is French and even though I decided to install my distribution in English, a US layout would be completely unusable for me since roughly I write as much French as I write English. Part of the problem is that Canadian Layout doesn't mean anything to most people. In Montréal, we refer to this layout as Clavier Québécois and most English speakers would instantly associate this name with the layout with funky diacritics; Canadian doesn't make it clear that you get a keyboard optimized to input French. I am not too familiar with the history of layouts but I think that there used to be a layout called Canadian International that was promoted by the federal government. It uses direct keys for almost all accented characters. The keyboard used in Québec on the other hand uses dead keys (you type the accent then the letter you want to compose with) which people seem to prefer, probably because that leaves a few spare keys for stuff like brackets and curly braces. Presently, I think that most Canadian French speakers outside of Québec use the Clavier Québecois and this is why it shows up on your list as Canadian. As Simon Law suggested, renaming the layouts to make it clear which layout is which would probably do the trick. Further more, I think that the US layout should show up on the list of keyboards that you get when you click Canada because that's definitely the dominant layout around. I'll do a small informal informal survey around here to see which solution would please all our opinionated local language groups. -- Yannick Gingras -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Am 24.05.2008 um 22:20 schrieb Evan: While living in Germany might point towards the use of a german- layout keyboard, any decision really depends on what percent of German users actually use german-layout keyboards. Calculate with some 99%. Every PC offered comes with a german keyboard by default and only few vendors allow to change to an english layout. This holds true for even smaller markets like german- speaking switzerland. However, it is my guess that the standard US-English layout is common enough that it makes sense to leave this as-is. The reason, germans don't scream is, characters are almost the same on the german vs. the english keyboard. Punctuation ()§$ is totally different, though and then, there are umlauts ... many people can't type their name on a english layout correctly. Hope that helps, Markus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter http://www.jump-ing.de/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Yannick Gingras wrote: Hi, I just installed Kubuntu Hardy. I selected my location, Montreal, and only a few clicks later I had to pick a keyboard which defaulted to US. Since it knows where I live at this point, shouldn't the installer default to Canadian layout? Hmmm, well, I'm Canadian, but I have and have always had a US English keyboard. I think in this specific case, the Canadian layout may only be relevant for Quebec (i.e. English/French keyboards). I may be wrong, but I've never used anything but a US English keyboard in Toronto. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
Blaise Alleyne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hmmm, well, I'm Canadian, but I have and have always had a US English keyboard. I think in this specific case, the Canadian layout may only be relevant for Quebec (i.e. English/French keyboards). I may be wrong, but I've never used anything but a US English keyboard in Toronto. That is indeed a more of a problem in Québec since it's impossible to type French with the US layout. Many keyboards are sold with the US layout printed on but people configure their computer to use the Canadian layout (aka Qc, not the same as Canadian-multilingual). I'm typing this on a keyboard with the US layout printed on that I configured as Canadian. As Markus pointed out, most people can't write their name with the US layout. -- Yannick Gingras -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:57 AM, Yannick Gingras [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since it knows where I live at this point, shouldn't the installer default to Canadian layout? Not necessarily. The keyboard layout is different from the locale. It is (AFAIK) possible to use any layout of keyboard with any locale from any location. While living in Germany might point towards the use of a german-layout keyboard, any decision really depends on what percent of German users actually use german-layout keyboards. I live in an English-speaking country, and I rarely encounter keyboards that aren't US-English. It's quite possible that German-layout keyboards are the norm in Germany. However, it is my guess that the standard US-English layout is common enough that it makes sense to leave this as-is. Just my two cents, Evan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Should default keyboard be based on location?
As I mentioned, it depends on what percent of non-english locales actually use non-english keyboards. I guessed that US-English layouts would be quite common even in non-english locales, but if non-english keyboards make up the majority, then this makes sense. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
