Rationalizing X and console keymaps and configuration (was Re: Fedora 18 issues with translations and keymaps)

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2013-01-03 at 19:58 +0100, Till Maas wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 09:59:52AM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> 
> > Oh sure. I guess I need to draw a distinction between what I see as two
> > different cases. Which I'm sure you understand but I'm having trouble
> > describing clearly. I guess what I'm saying is, if
> > there's /etc/keyboard.conf specifying 'KEYBOARD=foo', I should never
> > have to pass 'KEYBOARD=foo' as a cmdline to make foo my keyboard layout
> > in some case. As things stand I believe I do, for passphrase entry
> > during dracut.
> 
> It should also be made the other way round, i.e. if a keyboard layout is
> specified at the kernel command line, it should not be necessary to
> specify one in a local config file. Then if everything should use the
> same keyboard layout, there is only one place to set this instead of
> several ones that might diverge unintended.

Yeah, in general I think what we really want is the kind of standard
nix-y type model where it's really a single configuration item that can
be set at various levels which override each other:

user & desktop-specific config (e.g. gsettings) overrides...
user config (e.g. ~/.config/keyboard.conf) overrides...
systemwide config (e.g. /etc/keyboard.conf) overrides...
kernel parameter (e.g. keyboard=foo)

and all the levels are 'speaking the same language' - using the same
layout database and the same config format as far as possible.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
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