Comment 7 for bug 1332847

I have gained some more insight on this topic lately.

There is no "right" or "wrong" layout value in IBus plugins like these packages. We have reasons to assume that "default" is a deliberate decision after a trade-off between different goals. A hard coded layout would prevent issues like the one reported in this bug report, but it would make it harder for users who prefer some other underlying layout when using respective input method. It seems that they preferred the flexibilty which "default" offers.

It's worth noting that the ibus-anthy setup GUI allows the user to specify the layout (the Typing Method tab). To me that appears to be the optimal solution, and it's probably a good idea to encourage the upstream developers of other input methods to do the same.

But such a change won't happen in Ubuntu only. Please submit upstream issues if you want it to be considered by the upstream developers.

Still keeping this bug report open for now, since this discussion may be of some interest.