On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 04:08:07PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: > Package: console-setup > Version: 1.7 > Severity: wishlist > Tags: patch > > The attached patch implements a relatively smooth upgrade from > pre-console-setup systems. If X is installed, it extracts the desired > keyboard layout from xorg.conf; failing that, it uses a pretty horrible > lookup table borrowed from Ubuntu's xserver-xorg.config (which is a > superset of Debian's, I think), with the additional bug-fix of mapping > uk to plain gb rather than gb(intl) because UK users do not expect to > have dead keys. If it finds a keyboard layout using either of these > methods, it drops the priority of the layout and variant questions from > critical to medium.
Hi, Colin! I am realy unsure whether it is a good thing to drop the priority of the layout and variant questions. In the current version of config.proto there is some code where I tried to make the priority of the layout question language dependent - there is a 'case "$locale"' statement that gives a value to the variable $layout_priority. However later I decided to leave this variable unused. What concerns me is that in can be a real disaster if the layout guess is wrong. If this happens then you are not allowed even to fix the system since in order to fix the system you need a working keyboard... The current debian kernels do not support the emergency mode "-b" on the boot prompt and in single user mode the bad keyboard will be already activated. Even if you manage to type somehow the correct password (you don't see what you type!) you have to know how to fix the keyboard working with a wrong one. For now I will try to use only the value of debian-installer/keymap. If one has been able to complete the installation with some particular keymap then this keymap is most likely usable and hopefuly it is relatively safe to lower the priority of the layout question. I hope that for most cases this will be enough to provide a smooth update from pre-console-setup systems. I do not want to use the xorg.conf file because I have seen many systems with completely wrong keyboard setup in this file since both GNOME and KDE provide user-friendly instruments to setup the keyboard. I suppose this happens mostly with non-latin keyboards because one can use the usual QWERTY keyboard in order to type the password. By the way the values of XKBLAYOUT and XKBVARIANT from the patch you provided are not exactly the same as the values of XkbLayout and XkbVariant from xorg.conf. They are more like default_layout and default_variant. For example XKBLAYOUT="bg" and XKBVARIANT="bds" correspond to XkbLayout "us,bg" and XkbVariant ",bds". Otherwise we would end with a keyboard that is uncapable to produce a single Latin character. Even though the current code of the config script overrides this bad value it is better not to rely on this. Also I think it is better not to guess the keyboard model (i.e. the values of XKBMODEL and default_model) either from xorg.conf or from debian-instaler/keymap. The current model detection code is safer. Anton Zinoviev P.S. I have already commited in the SVN repository the fixes I propose for all bugs you reported. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
