Should default keyboard be based on location?

[Yannick Gingras]

Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> writes:

> On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:57:48AM -0400, Yannick Gingras wrote:
>>   I just installed Kubuntu Hardy.  I selected my location, Montreal,
>> and only a few clicks later I had to pick a keyboard which defaulted
>> to US.  Since it knows where I live at this point, shouldn't the
>> installer default to Canadian layout?  I think that this is related
>> to ticked 37138 but I'm not sure because it seem to focus on locales
>> while the keymap is mostly locale independent.
>
> The keymap *is* selected based on location. However, a compatriot of
> yours requested that we should select a US keyboard by default for
> English-speaking Canadians, and a Canadian keyboard by default for
> French-speaking Canadians. That's what the installer implements.
>
>   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/console-setup/+bug/64418

That is a really interesting point of view.  However, allow me to
develop since language identity is really important for our little
group of francophones lost on a continent of English speakers.  

Simon Law, the bug reporter whom happen to live in Montréal not too
far from my place, pointed out that in here, English speakers use the
US layout while French speakers use the French Canadian one.  Simon is
primarily an English speaker and I suspect that he doesn't write a lot
of French.  My primary language on the other hand is French and even
though I decided to install my distribution in English, a US layout
would be completely unusable for me since roughly I write as much
French as I write English.

Part of the problem is that "Canadian Layout" doesn't mean anything to
most people.  In Montréal, we refer to this layout as "Clavier
Québécois" and most English speakers would instantly associate this
name with the layout with funky diacritics; "Canadian" doesn't make it
clear that you get a keyboard optimized to input French.  

I am not too familiar with the history of layouts but I think that
there used to be a layout called "Canadian International" that was
promoted by the federal government.  It uses direct keys for almost
all accented characters.  The keyboard used in Québec on the other
hand uses dead keys (you type the accent then the letter you want to
compose with) which people seem to prefer, probably because that
leaves a few spare keys for stuff like brackets and curly braces.
Presently, I think that most Canadian French speakers outside of
Québec use the Clavier Québecois and this is why it shows up on your
list as "Canadian".

As Simon Law suggested, renaming the layouts to make it clear which
layout is which would probably do the trick.  Further more, I think
that the US layout should show up on the list of keyboards that you
get when you click Canada because that's definitely the dominant
layout around.

I'll do a small informal informal survey around here to see which
solution would please all our opinionated local language groups.

-- 
Yannick Gingras