Comment 21 for bug 108057

The bug is not a bug, it's a feature, the Romanian layout works as intended. The behaviour in xkeyboard-config will change when the time will come, see below for details. Unfortunately there are two different problems discussed in this bug:

1) should the diacritics in the default layout be changed? (that means: scedilla ->scommabelow & tcedilla->tcommabelow)
2) should the default layout be changed from "Romanian Programmers" (secondary layout in the the SR 13392:2004 standard) to "Romanian" (primary layout in SR 13392:2004)?

1. I think the time has almost come for the first change. MacOS has had the "commabelow" diacritics in the RO layout for a long time, but the use of the Romanian layout from MacOS in practice is rather insignificant. MS has just introduced the correct diacritics in the primary layout of Romanian Vista, but Vista is still a long way from becoming the mainstream OS, most Romanian users that use diacritics are still using the default layout from XP, with the "cedilla" diacritics. Although there are fixes for XP users (the aforementioned patch for the output and the layouts from secarica.ro for the input), people are mostly not aware of them and get angry when they see broken diacritics from Vista or MacOS (or hypothetically Linux) users. I think it's important to wait for the number of Vista and MacOS users to reach a critical mass before making this change, in order to annoy as few users as possible. We are close. (The "we must be part of the change" argument doesn't really weight much, the Linux usage of the RO layout is really insignificant in the overall picture and I think MS should bear the pain and the blame for this transition).

2. I don't agree with the second change. There are historical reasons for the "Programmers" layout being the primary layout in X and xkeyboard-config, the main one being the lack of hardware Romanian keyboards. No, Jani, you weren't living under a rock, I safely assume that under 1% percent of the keyboards in use in Romania are localized (and what a shame that is, even for a country from the Balkans, Romania is the only one with this problem). Besides that, I happen to know a few users of the Romanian layout in X (OK, I've just counted them, they are eight, not including me). Except one, they all prefer the "Programmers" layout. The one that doesn't use the "Programmers" layout uses the "winkeys" layout (the QWERTZ one from XP) because he is stuck with a German keyboard. Granted, my ad-hoc poll is a very subjective one, but let's build a better statistics from asking the Romanian translators what layout they prefer and use. I bet 10:1 that it's the "Programmers" layout. So what would be the reason for changing the primary layout? Windows has it's default own layout (which in Vista is one from the standard), MacOS has it's own wacky layout, xkeyboard-config has it's own default layout (which is also included in the standard). What is the problem with that? People get angry when defaults are changed (as Manfred Pohler's change in the X layout has already proved).

I've just returned from a week-long trip, please excuse my late reply. Thank you for subscribing me, Jani.