The bug is not a bug, it's a feature, the Romanian layout works as
intended. The behaviour in xkeyboard-config will change when the time
will come, see below for details. Unfortunately there are two different
problems discussed in this bug:

1) should the diacritics in the default layout be changed? (that means: 
scedilla ->scommabelow & tcedilla->tcommabelow)
2) should the default layout be changed from "Romanian Programmers" (secondary 
layout in the the SR 13392:2004 standard) to "Romanian" (primary layout in SR 
13392:2004)?

1. I think the time has almost come for the first change. MacOS has had
the "commabelow" diacritics in the RO layout for a long time, but the
use of the Romanian layout from MacOS in practice is rather
insignificant. MS has just introduced the correct diacritics in the
primary layout of Romanian Vista, but Vista is still a long way from
becoming the mainstream OS, most Romanian users that use diacritics are
still using the default layout from XP, with the "cedilla" diacritics.
Although there are fixes for XP users (the aforementioned patch for the
output and the layouts from secarica.ro for the input), people are
mostly not aware of them and get angry when they see broken diacritics
from Vista or MacOS (or hypothetically Linux) users. I think it's
important to wait for the number of Vista and MacOS users to reach a
critical mass before making this change, in order to annoy as few users
as possible. We are close. (The "we must be part of the change" argument
doesn't really weight much, the Linux usage of the RO layout is really
insignificant in the overall picture and I think MS should bear the pain
and the blame for this transition).

2. I don't agree with the second change. There are historical reasons
for the "Programmers" layout being the primary layout in X and
xkeyboard-config, the main one being the lack of hardware Romanian
keyboards. No, Jani, you weren't living under a rock, I safely assume
that under 1% percent of the keyboards in use in Romania are localized
(and what a shame that is, even for a country from the Balkans, Romania
is the only one with this problem). Besides that, I happen to know a few
users of the Romanian layout in X (OK, I've just counted them, they are
eight, not including me). Except one, they all prefer the "Programmers"
layout. The one that doesn't use the "Programmers" layout uses the
"winkeys" layout (the QWERTZ one from XP) because he is stuck with a
German keyboard. Granted, my ad-hoc poll is a very subjective one, but
let's build a better statistics from asking the Romanian translators
what layout they prefer and use. I bet 10:1 that it's the "Programmers"
layout. So what would be the reason for changing the primary layout?
Windows has it's default own layout (which in Vista is one from the
standard), MacOS has it's own wacky layout, xkeyboard-config has it's
own default layout (which is also included in the standard). What is the
problem with that? People get angry when defaults are changed (as
Manfred Pohler's change in the X layout has already proved).

I've just returned from a week-long trip, please excuse my late reply.
Thank you for subscribing me, Jani.

-- 
Romanian keyboard layout has incorrect characters
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/108057
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