Install menu removes foreign characters from user name

Bug #388028 reported by Asbjorno
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
PyICU
Fix Released
Medium
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

When installing ubuntu you are asked to enter your full name ("what is your name"). The installer then automatically fills out the field "what name do you want to log in?" But if My name contains a foreign character, the character is removed from the user name.

For instance when i enter:

"Bjørn Lastname"

the user name shows as "bjrn" and the name of the computer as "bjrn-desktop"

Here I think the installer should either
-suggest "asbjørn" if it's technically possible to have foreign character in a username
-or translate the "ø" to an "o". Similar rules should apply to other foreign characters

Tags: installer
am_public (am-public)
affects: ubuntu → ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) wrote :

I think the best way to do this is to have PyICU include the Transform classes in their bindings, use those with the following transform: "lower; latin; nfkd" and hand remove anything that isn't a legal username character ([^-_a-zA-Z]). This will remove accents and such composing characters.

This will still need special handling for some characters, including the example given of ø. My testing and a IBM FAQ entry [1] indicate that there are several special cases that normal Unicode transform doesn't do right. So we'll have to hand-transform some things, like ß and æ. Basically anything listed in the IBM article.

BTW, you can play around with Unicode transforms online [2]. It's pretty interesting. For our purposes, using the 'Names' data is particularly relevant.

Unfortunately, the PyICU bindings do *not* have the Transform bits of ICU wrapped yet.

[1] http://ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21247569
[2] http://demo.icu-project.org/icu-bin/translit

Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) wrote :

The Transliterator class (I misspoke about a Transform class) has been added to PyICU svn. It's after FeatureFreeze, so I suspect patching the feature into PyICU for Karmic is not worth it. Probably wise to wait for an actual PyICU release anyway. Maybe for Karmic+1.

Michael Terry (mterry)
Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in pyicu:
status: Unknown → Fix Released
Changed in pyicu:
importance: Unknown → Medium
Revision history for this message
Phillip Susi (psusi) wrote :

Confirmed on 13.10.

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson) wrote :

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson) wrote :

This issue has sat incomplete for more than 60 days now. I'm going to close it as invalid. Please feel free re-open if this is still an issue for you. Thank you.

Changed in ubiquity (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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