Comment 4 for bug 327963

> Getting a better error message for the Gnome UI is a GNOME issue obviously, not xkeyboard-config's duty, and really ought to be filed separately against the appropriate GNOME component.

I agree, just filed bug #328980 for this. It's a bit tricky, as it involves multiple packages.

> As to the secondary bug of the error activating XKB, that's a well known issue so will dupe to that. Undupe (and clarify) if you'd like something differently done.

I had bug #67188 considered before filing mine, but the mention of editing xorg.conf in the headline didn't seem to apply to me at all, so I filed a new one. Now that I've read all the comments in #67188, I get the feeling that it is a large collection of bugs with quite different reasons, but all looking the same due to missing error messages. Some, like bug #67188 comment #38, are the same as this one here, while others have different causes, for which I don't know the reason. For lack of information, I expect #67188 to remain open for quite a long time.

In contrast to this, the scope of what I request for here is much clearer, and a fix is possible. Therefore I'd undupe and ask that you
 1. make macintosh_vndr/de(mac_nodeadkeys) an alias for macintosh_vndr/de(nodeadkeys)
 2. Do the same for the deadkeys variant
 3. Do the same for languages other than "de" with similar configuration
The attached patch tries to follow this approach. I grepped fro '"mac' in symbols/* and then made sure the same variants were included as aliases in symbols/macintosh_vndr/*. Not tested yet.

You might, on the other hand, be of the opinion that having different names for the same symbols is not the way to go, and that instead of providing these aliases at the xkb-data level, the user interface should prevent the user from selecting such combinations. In that case, another bug for the Gnome control-center would be in order, while you might mark this as invalid for xkeyboard-config.