KDE 'changes' my keyboard

Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan at gmail.com
Mon Jan 25 15:07:39 UTC 2010


On Mon, 2010-01-25 at 15:55 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > I just select it at install time, but I don't know that I would support
> > it *by default*. Imagine the newbies screaming that their keyboard
> > doesn't work :-)
> 
> And the answer to that would be: "GNU/Linux is different, it doesn't work 
> the same way as Winblow$, get over it or leave."

Yes, that'll really pull in the new users. Not. We could go round and
round on this, but my view is that it's pragmatically sensible to make
things work as the user expects (sometimes called the "Principle Of
Least Astonishment") as long as it doesn't cause major problems. Anyone
who wants to type Latin1 characters can easily find out how to do it,
whereas many naive users think of the computer a glorified typewriter.
We want to encourage them, not alienate them. Look at all the yelling
about the KDE4 desktop (plasma) model, which is somewhat different from
what people are used to, and that's among users who presumably have a
certain level of technical knowledge.

> In fact, to resolve the "zap X server" combo debate once and for all, why 
> not have the left Winblow$ key zap the X server? ^^ "Surprise!" :-p OK, 
> that's a bit extreme… ;-)

I don't even have that key.

poc



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