List of packages including country flags

[Ding-Yi Chen]

於 六，2009-05-23 於 19:26 +0200，Kevin Kofler 提到：

> I know that countries and languages don't map 1:1 and that keyboard layouts
> don't map 1:1 to either. But if you look at the list of keyboard layouts,
> you'll see that 78 layouts out of 83 (checked on Fedora 9) are named after
> a country. I don't see how it would be inappropriate to match those up with
> a flag. If that's inappropriate, then the name needs fixing too! 

Unless there is a plan to complete the flags/icons for 83-78=5 layouts,
it does not look consistent, does it?


> But then
> it's kinda hard to find a proper name and especially a proper 2-letter code
> to show in the switcher (so I don't see how 2-letter codes are any better
> than flags). (How do you fit "Germany and Austria" into 2 letters? "da"
> won't cut it, that's already Denmark. Even 3 letters are insufficient for
> some layouts used in multiple countries. And you can't fit more into a
> systray icon.) The remaining 5 layouts (Arabic, Braille, Esperanto, Latin
> America and Maori) are shown without a country flag, using just a 3-letter
> abbreviation (Maori could probably use a New Zealand flag, but it currently
> doesn't). I don't see how that interface is inappropriate.

Technically, up to 6 alphabets can be actually squeeze in the systray
icon. I already explained in my previous posts. See icon for SCIM of
concrete example.

> As for the multi-language countries which have been cited, both Switzerland
> and India have A SINGLE keyboard layout in that list (which is generated
> from xkb data)!

I think there are some Dvorak keyboards in China and India, but Dvorak
is not listed in either of them.

>  Switzerland has variants for German and French (not sure
> which one the Italian speakers use) which you select AFTER you selected the
> main layout in the list (and the dialog allows you to pick 2 variants and
> to rename them, so if you want to switch between Swiss German and Swiss
> French layouts, you can make them show up as de and fr or something of your
> choice in the switcher). India has a default + 15 variants (and there too
> you can pick multiple ones and rename them). So if you think selecting
> layouts per country and considering the language variants variants of the
> same layout is broken, complain to the xkb folks, not to KDE!

It might be too late for xkb, but KDE/GNOME key layout selector on the
other hand, can provide alternative UI to achieve the same effect.

It is good that KDE can customize the layout label.However
as a input method developer, I am more willing to see the key layouts
which are categorized by ... layout themselves. Such as 
QWERTY-- Default
      +-ja_JP
      +-ko_KR, 
      +-de_CH
      +-fr_CH
      +-it_CH
      +-en_UK
      +...
DVORAK-- 
QWERTZ--
      +-de_CH
      +-de_CH at SunDeadKey
      +-de_CH at NOSunDeadKey
      +-de_CH at Mac
      +-fr_CH
      +-it_CH
      +...
AZERTY--fr_FR
      +-fr_BE
....

The benefits of this category systems are:
1. Input method developers only need to deal with the keys that matter
(i.e. 0-9 and a-z) instead of go through the whole country list.
2. End users need fewer scroll for the first level category.
3. Reduce the redundancy: Many countries use essentially the standard
QWERTY layout, no need to show all of them. 
4. Flags can be assigned to the second level, either from the listing
locale string or the regional setting. So Aussies, Kiwi, Singaporean can
use their own flags (instead of American flags), everybody is happy. :-)


-- 
Ding-Yi Chen
Software Engineer
Internationalization Group
Red Hat, Inc.

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