Comment 7 for bug 656777

Didier, in the wider context it's not always just the language that informs the keyboard choice: it's often the combination of language and country, or even just the country. Selecting by language only may be an improvement over the US keymap in your case, but definitely not always. For example, the French Canadian keymap is very much closer to the US keymap than to the French keymap, and I'm willing to bet that French Canadians would be quite upset if we assumed that they'd prefer the French keymap just because they speak French.

While you're right that gfxboot makes the same assumption, at the time I made that assumption in gfxboot there was very little typing required before you had the opportunity to modify the default keyboard layout; and gfxboot also offers a keyboard menu, so it's possible to change it immediately if it's wrong (at least after the first time you notice the problem). That wouldn't be the case here - there's no way to change the keyboard layout until after the timezone page.

As Evan says, there isn't a simple quick fix here, certainly not as simple as moving things around or assuming that language is sufficient to infer keyboard layout. A keyboard indicator would allow the user to change the keyboard layout before or after the timezone page as necessary, and is probably the proper solution.