[Mageia-dev] [soft-commits] [4436] german keyboard: default to variant with enabled deadkeys instead of "nodeadkeys variant" ( mga#3791)

Mon Jul 30 14:41:46 CEST 2012

2012/7/30 Thierry Vignaud <thierry.vignaud at gmail.com>:
+> On 28 June 2012 02:51, Thierry Vignaud <thierry.vignaud at gmail.com> wrote:
+>>>>> german keyboard: default to variant with enabled deadkeys instead
+>>>>> of"nodeadkeys variant"  (mga#3791)
+>>>>
+>>>> Oups, why that?
+>>>> As far as I'm concerned no deadkeys is the default for German users and
+>>>> that's good!
+>>>>
+>>>> Any reasons for this change?
+>>>
+>>> Call it "Competitive analysis" if you want. Keyboards comes with those
+>>> little keys that are meant to produce accented characters in
+>>> combination with regular letters, and this how it works on Windows,
+>>> the platform most users will migrate from, and also on Mac OS X.
+>>>
+>>> Regular users don't have any use of stand-alone-accent-characters. And
+>>> even with deadkeys it is easy to produce the standalone accent by just
+>>> pressing the key twice (so you can get backticks easily).
+>>> If you're a programmer and are using a nodeadkeys variant for that
+>>> reason, you're not the target population of a suggested default. (If
+>>> you know what is meant with "deadkeys" and "nodeadkeys", you're not in
+>>> target of that dialog, and have the knowledge to not accept the
+>>> default, but choose the nodeadkeys variant that is listed right next
+>>> to the regular variant).
+>>>
+>>> The variant with deadkeys is called "German" without any addition for
+>>> a reason. If nodeadkeys were the expected/more common choice, then it
+>>> would be "German (international)" or "German (deadkeys)", like it is
+>>> the case for the US-variants.
+>>
+>> So Olivier, do you agree with that change or not?
+
+It may be logical but German users have been taught to use
+"nodeadkeys" for ages. Changing this now just because of semantics
+does not seem to be a wise move (I always use "German"). But OTOH it
+is not such a big thing. It will cause the usual number of questions
+in the forums ("MAG3 breaks my keyboard!") but this will vanish over
+the years. :)
+
+-- 
+wobo
+