Fedora 18 issues with translations and keymaps

Thu Jan 3 13:10:31 UTC 2013

----- Original Message -----
> Hey, folks. I'm not really sure how to frame it, but the result of
> all
> my poking about at keyboard layout bugs and related stuff recently is
> that I'm pretty sad at the state of support for
> anything-but-U.S.-English in Fedora 18.
> 
> Here's the tally:
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=889562 - systemd
> conversion from xkb to console layouts fails probably more than it
> succeeds, when it does, you wind up with U.S. English as your console
> layout, not whatever you picked during installation
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=891487 - anaconda
> doesn't
> seem to manage to offer all the keyboard layouts it could do, and
> some
> of the ones it's missing are somewhat important
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=891489 - anaconda's
> mapping of 'native' layouts to user's chosen install language doesn't
> work in all cases
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=878433 (?) - GNOME has
> a
> weird predilection for coming up with the obscure 'Bambara' layout in
> user sessions after an install in a non-English language, but not the
> correct layout for that language
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=881624 - X and GNOME
> keyboard layouts revert to U.S. English on upgrade to F18
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=854557 - the 'layout
> testing' in the keyboard spoke doesn't work at all how you'd expect
> it
> to
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=882440 - in fact,
> people
> have various problems interacting with and understanding the keyboard
> spoke at all, really. Several of the issues discussed in this bug are
> 'greatest hits', especially the lack of a default layout switch
> command,
> the fact that anaconda doesn't automatically start using a layout you
> promote to the top of the list, and the lack of any kind of indicator
> in
> anaconda as to what layout is in use
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=859641 - we're picking
> the
> wrong default keyboard for Dutch, apparently
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=867110 - ...and German
> (Switzerland)
> 
> * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885345 - ...and Dutch
> (Belgian)
> 
> (there's a few more along those lines which I won't bore anyone with)
> 
> In addition to those bugs, we have fairly significant regressions in
> the
> completeness of anaconda translations between Fedora 16 and Fedora 18
> (the numbers for F17 for some languages are weird - a lot of
> languages
> show 55% completion for F17 but 90-100% for F16, which seems bogus,
> as
> I'm sure things didn't change that much between F16 and F17, so I'm
> just
> using the F16 numbers. I assume there's some weirdness that explains
> the
> odd 55% numbers for F17, but if not, hey, F17 was kinda boned
> too...):
> 
> Language		F16		F18
> Finnish			93%		75%
> Indonesian		100%		33%
> Kannada			94%		33%
> Oriya			94%		27%
> Telugu			94%		32%
> Bengali (India)		93%		33%
> Portuguese		100%		36%
> Persian			95%		27%
> Malayalam		78%		20%
> NorwegianBokmal		92%		55%
> Bengali			93%		33%
> Sinhala			93%		27%
> Serbian			81%		23%
> Serbian(Latin)		81%		23%
> Hebrew			83%		22%
> Catalan			68% (98% F17)	25%
> Latvian			88%		20%
> Greek			68%		21%
> Turkish			79%		21%
> Maithili		67%		18%
> Asturian		85%		24%
> 
> (from https://fedora.transifex.com/projects/p/anaconda/ )
> 
> There are several others around the 50-70% complete mark for F16,
> too, I
> just cut off at 67%. It's a fairly long list of languages for which
> we
> previously had tolerably complete translation coverage, but we now
> have
> a level which isn't really usable: basically these languages have
> gone
> from 'covered' in at least F16 (probably F17 too) to 'not covered' in
> F18. I want to stress I'm not blaming anyone for this: I don't see
> how
> it could be otherwise, the problem is the huge amount of string churn
> caused by newUI, I'm actually more amazed at how many languages _do_
> have close-to-100% translations for F18 than how many _don't_, given
> the
> conditions. It's just an unfortunate thing.
> 
> anaconda does not list every available translation for the user to
> choose from, but I cannot figure out for the life of me how the
> decision
> about which to display is made: it's not that very incomplete
> translations are left out, as plenty of very incomplete translations
> (including most of the above) are shown. If we filtered out very
> incomplete translations we might at least look a bit less silly, but
> we
> don't seem to be doing that. Our language selection screen is
> definitely
> writing checks that our translations can't cash :)
> 
> I don't really know where we need to go with this, exactly, but a few
> questions arise naturally:
> 
> 1. In the short term, is the combination of all these factors enough
> for
> us to want to delay F18 further to try and make things suck less?
> 
> 2. If not, do we want to engage in some Messaging around the F18
> release
> to emphasize that we know there are all these issues and we'll try to
> smooth things out for F19?
> 
> 3. In the longer term, how can we get anaconda, i18n, systemd, GNOME
> etc
> folks all pointed in the same direction and working so that there's
> far
> less suckage and far more smooth interaction going on here? Should we
> try and run some sort of session at FUDCon?

Looking on the scope of work needed to make it at least suck less - 
and as the mapping mess is even more about consolidation in upstreams 
(or even cross distribution) as you pointed out in 3 - I'm definitely 
for the second option. Not saying to give it up - for example that "wrong
default keyboard" where we know the correct one could be low hanging
fruits (I hope) and we can accept is NTH and make sure the work is
done. 

What we really need is that someone would be REALLY working on the 
long-term solution, not just talking about it and it's something
that requires cooperation, a lot of know-how etc.

For translations - let's ask Translation team on today's Readiness
meeting what are theirs feelings about the current state. 

So for me - I'm for options #2 and #3, communicate it, make sure we
will work on long term solution - on keymaps, on translations etc.

For Fedora 18 we already did a lot of compromises but still it's
getting to be quite solid release and very solid building block
for F19 (btw. that's even not shorter, but with end of May even
longer release cycle ;-). And let's release the blocker resources
on real work...

Jaroslav

> Thanks, folks!
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
> http://www.happyassassin.net
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