Keyboard screen is confusing to non-techies

[Michael Terry]

Binary package hint: oem-config

The keyboard screen is confusing. I've never had a problem (since I'm US English, so easy!), but I've had reports that others have.

Trying to make it easier, could we restrict the set of proposed keyboards a union of keyboard layouts that match the country and language the user chose? (in GNOME, the keyboard chooser lets you sort by country or language, so that info must be somewhere)

Or, could we just do it automatically and let the user change afterward? Probably not, but it would be nice.

Terms used also might be confusing. I'm assuming most non-technical users don't know if they have 104 or 105 keys or if they have dead keys (makes me think of dead pixels, broken keys).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Can we just go with what's done in Ubiquity? I.e. you get a radio button with "Suggested keyboard layout" and the big list greyed out, so you only have to give it any attention if you genuinely have a different keymap.

We've tried inferring the keyboard layout from language and country before (including automatic selection), and it never works. There's always somebody (often, lots of people) who moved to that country from somewhere else and took their computer with them, or bought it abroad, or got given it by a friend, or something, and you really do want the keyboard layout to match what's engraved on the keys rather than what the over-clever operating system thinks you ought to be using. Every one of those keyboard layouts is there because somebody uses it. The only thing I can think of would be to have a "Show me all keyboard layouts" checkbox or something; I'm concerned that the data would be very hard to get right.

Dead keys is something that will probably be a bit more familiar to non-English keyboard users, where the notion of a key you have to press before another key in order to get a diacritic (e.g. ' then a -> á) is a bit more familiar. I am wary about changing this from a English-centric point of view.

[Loye Young (loyeyoung)]

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Colin Watson <email address hidden> wrote:
> Dead keys is something that will probably be a bit more familiar to non-
> English keyboard users, where the notion of a key you have to press
> before another key in order to get a diacritic (e.g. ' then a -> á) is a
> bit more familiar. I am wary about changing this from a English-centric
> point of view.

Colin frames the issue well.

Here on the US / Mexico border, we've come across this issue
frequently, and we are still searching for a balanced solution.

One adjustment that would help, perhaps, would be better nomenclature.
To us gringos, a "dead" key means a key that doesn't work because it's
broken. The install script for console-setup describes the AltGr and
Compose keys, and gives a helpful explanations. (Try running
"dpkg-reconfigure console-setup".) An explanation taken whole or in
part from that script would be helpful, methinks.

By the way, I personally like the manner in which console-setup guides
the user in making the keyboard selection. I think it strikes the
right balance between simplicity and flexibility. I am told, however,
that some other people like simpler interfaces with fewer choices, so
it's a judgment call.

Happy Trails,

Loye Young
Isaac & Young Computer Company
Laredo, Texas
http://start.iycc.net
956.857.1172

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

I haven't seen Ubiquity's 'I'm fine with a default keyboard layout' checkbox. Is that new in Jaunty? I'll check.

I agree that automatically choosing it is very hard. Too hard to assume we can get right. Though, there is a UI for changing it once the user is logged in, as a fallback. So if we get something wrong, the user isn't 100% screwed, but yeah, I don't want to rely on the user finding that.

As for 'dead' keys, like Loye says, as an English speaker, 'compose keys' at least make some sense to me (oh, yeah, you're 'composing' one key from two). I don't know what 'dead' is translated to for other languages, but maybe translators would understand 'compose' better.

For that matter, it doesn't even look like layout names are translated (is that true? It doesn't seem to be for me...). That would be a big help. I don't know how we expect someone that doesn't speak English to find the right layout at all. This page just becomes a big scary widget for them if it's all in English.

And the other point I brought up, 104/105/106 keys... I don't know the technical details of what that changes. Does it just enable more keys? Does it hurt to tell Ubuntu I have 106 when I only have 104? I mean, the 2 keys just never get hit, right? Could we not ask, and just assume the larger set of keys? I assume the answer is no.

Maybe one way of making it less confusing would be to allow showing layout pictures, like the GNOME preference app does. Let the user press a button to see if it matches what they have.

I'm just brainstorming. :)

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

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.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]