xorg-x11-xkbdata, xkbdata, xkeyboard-config and you

[Mike A. Harris]

The xorg-x11-xkbdata package up until version 1.0.1-4 contained
xkb data from the upstream X.Org official "xkbdata" tarball which
was part of the X11R7.0 release.

Ever since X.Org reformed, the primary XFree86 xkbdata maintainers
split out xkbdata into a separate project on freedesktop.org, so
they could maintain the data in one location for all open source
X11 implementations (primarily X.Org X11, and XFree86).  The new
project was named "xkeyboard-config" and is in the "xkbdesc"
CVS module on freedesktop.org.

However, since then, both X.Org and XFree86 have shipped the
traditional xkbdata that they've always shipped, and have not
updated to using the new xkeyboard-config data.  As such, what
has happened, is that the xkbdata in both projects has rotted,
with not much maintenance happening, and when bugs get reported
for xkbdata, the problems get fixed in xkeyboard-config if they're
present there also, and the bugs get marked closed in bugzilla.

Unfortunately, the users never see the bugfixes because neither
X project ships the xkeyboard-config data, and most distributions
ship what X.Org or XFree86 has provided.

There is fairly broad concensus that xkeyboard-config data is
"the future", and also that xkbdata from X.Org is more or less
totally unmaintained and abandoned.  One might ask "why did they
ship abandoned unmaintained xkbdata instead of shipping
xkeyboard-config then?", and that's a good question.  I don't
know the 100% authoritative answer, but I believe it was because
it was too big of a change at the time, plus the fact that the 7.0
and 6.9 releases had to be the same codebase, and that it wouldn't
be easy to integrate everything into 6.9.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that the GNOME project,
and I believe the KDE project as well, have standardized upstream
on using/expecting xkeyboard-config data present on the system,
and a whole slew of nasty problems happen if you're using the
X.Org or XFree86 unmaintained data.

As such, since xkeyboard-config is the future, and is very
actively maintained right now, we have decided to switch to using
it in FC5, so long as there are no major unresolveable regressions
between now and the final package build date.  It is too late to
change package names, or to add new package names to the OS, so I
had to assimilate the xorg-x11-xkbdata package with the
xkeyboard-config tarball.  Other than that it should be a drop-in
replacement.

The new package (1.0.1-5) containing xkeyboard-config is now in
rawhide, so you're all going to be using it tomorrow.  Many thanks
to the people who tested the pre-rawhide packages.

Please note that since the new data files have not been part of
the Fedora development process until now, so there could be some
problems potentially.  Please be sure to reconfigure your keyboards
with the gnome keyboard applet, and generally pound on it.

If you experience bugs/problems with the new xkbdata, please report
them in the X.Org bugzilla at http://bugs.freedesktop.org, in the
"xkbdesc" component, and select version "0.7" if it is visible in
bugzilla.  Once you've filed your bug in X.Org bugzilla, feel free
to file a tracking bug in Red Hat bugzilla also if you wish, and
we'll track the problem for FC5 as well.  There will be a new
version released soon that we'll be updating too, hopefully before
FC5 final as well.

This should resolve various keyboard quirks that have been reported
in different components throughout FC5 testing, but may introduce
a few new bugs too.  Overall, since it is the only maintained
xkbdata however, even if there are a few bumps, they'll be ironed
out via modular package updates easily enough, unlike the situation
we'd have if we shipped the X.Org xkbdata and let it rot.

Hope your keyboards all do the happy dance now.

Enjoy.


-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.