Bug 12568

Created attachment 11754 [details] [review]
latam layout: no dead_tilde

Thanks, committed.

Hi. I share your feeling that the latam keyboard layout lacks a dead tilde, and I added one to mine locally. However, I don't agree with the solution adopted. The asciitilde is a very common symbol in urls, in the shell, in programming languages such as awk, perl, ruby. And I am very used to hitting <AD12> to type the asciitilde. This change has disrupted my typing.
I'm sure we'll find users accustomed to one for each of the three keys, and I think the best solution would be to either use the less common of the three keys for the dead_tilde (as that would disrupt the less number of users) or to use a new key for it (which would probably disrupt no user, depending of which key is chosen)
Other point I think supports the idea of leaving <AD12> generate asciitilde is the fact that the Windows Latin American keyboard layout generates asciitilde on that key and, while I can expect Debian and Ubuntu systems around me to adopt the new setting in some time, I don't expect Windows systems to adopt such a change ever. And maybe there are more like me which being a network admin, work daily on several different computers. I think it's better to make that one work the same as in Windows, and use some other key that generates nothing in Windows for the dead_key. I would personally choose <AC10>, but some other users may disagree.

Regards,
Andy.

Mohammed, what do you think?

Hi, there's been a recent discussion on a similar bug:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9763

Most people there expressed opinions similar to mine. I think reversing the change should be considered here too, for similar reasons. Look that I still favor the addition of dead_tilde on a less used key combination, just in case someone might need it. I myself use dead_tilde sometimes.

Regards,
Andy.

Marga, Mohammed?

I think the poll (rather than vote) pretty clearly tends to the revert.
Sorry for the trouble...

Sweet, committed!

Thank you very much. I appreciate the attention from all of you guys.

Hi!

I'm sorry that I didn't react earlier, I had no warning that this bug, or it's sister bug http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9763 had been subjected to a poll and were being reverted.

I think that it's a serious mistake to have no dead tildes in a Spanish language keyboard.  In the latinamerican keyboards we now have 3 asciitilde and NO dead_tilde.  While in the Spanish keyboard (the one in bug 9763), there are 2 asciitilde and NO dead_tilde.

Even if Spanish itself does not include ã or õ, Portuguese does.  And we live in an integrated world. Specially in Latin America, where the biggest country of the region is Brazil, which speaks Portuguese, not Spanish.  It's very important for all of us to be able to write the characters of our neighbour countries.

Take for example the case of the argentinian NIC service which from now on will allow domains with special characters: http://www.nic.ar/616, it not only allows the special characters for Spanish, but also the ones for Portuguese.

The current keyboard has a dead ` and a dead ^, which are characters only used in French, yet nobody complains that these should be made non-dead.  So, why do we allow for compatibility with French and not with Portuguese?

Most people complained about this because of habit more than because of real causes.  Yet sometimes changes have to be made that mean that people have to get used to them, and eventually they'll be glad that the change was made.

I think that the most sensible place for the dead tilde is near all the other dead keys (<AD12>), but if people so vehemently opose to that, then leave the dead tilde in the <AE04> key.  But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE allow us to have at least one dead_tilde.

Also, I don't think this should be "polled" but rather a standard should be used.  But, if you have to take it to a poll, please warn everybody that is affected.  All the people in Latin America, specially those in countries that are part of Mercosur eventually need some Portuguese characters, however it looks like most people that expressed their opinions were from Spain, not from Latin America.

Love,
Margarita.

Well, actually, although I was ok with the fix, I agree with Margarita. I was against turning the asciitilde from <AD12> into a dead_tilde, since I'm sure a lot of people is used to getting asciitilde from that key. But, of course, there's going to be a lot of people used to the other keys too, and I have no way to know which key is the most used. And I still think it's wrong to change it just like that.

On the other hand, I know the need for dead_tilde. I changed <AC10> to give dead_tilde in my layout, since I sometimes need it too. But my choice of key is unlikely the best for everyone. And I can't agree with the people from the other bug that simply said "Spanish doesn't need dead_tilde, so we don't care". I think that's too narrow-minded.

I'm not so sure about the standards, I think it would be better to get to an agreement among the users, but I can't think of a way to achieve that. Personally, I would vote for <AC10> or for another key not withing those three.

By the way, I am Latin American, I'm Cuban.

Hi!

I want to note that there are other useful comments about this in the Debian bug: http://bugs.debian.org/444035.  Particularly interesting is the fact that a dead tilde is needed to type Guaraní [1] characters, and Guaraní speakers have to use Spanish keyboards because there doesn't exist any Guaraní keyboard.

Regarding which tilde should be made dead, I'm prepared to accept <AC10> instead of <AD12> or <AE04>, however I think this is not the best solution, reasons:

1) Everybody is going to be used to a different key, so with any solution someone is going to complain, I do not think that we will get less complains by selecting <AC10> instead of <AD12>
2) <AD12> is surrounded by many dead keys, most users will expect it to be dead.
3) <AD12> in "la" and <AE04> in "es" are the ones printed in the keyboard and specified by IBM as the dead ones.
4) Of all of these, <AC10> is the one that's in the home row and is thus easier to type than all the others.  I think that people that really want to get a ~ (for shell or url purposes) can get used to the new location easily, because it's more comfortable.

I understand that there might have been people that accidentally typed "rm *" instead of "rm *~", and I'm sincerely sorry for them.  However, I do not think that we should keep a bug around because some people might be used to it.

[1] About Guaraní: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaran%C3%AD

Created attachment 16749 [details]
Happy IBM 105 keys LatinAmerican™ keyboard

Just adding some thoughts, I hope I get this right, I'm not using the latest xkb layouts yet.

I have used the latam keyboard all my life, in Windows an Linux. I always have had to press <AltGr><+/*><space> to get "~".

The facts:
 - every latam keyboard user already is used to where ~ is
 - all latam keyboards are clearly printed as my attached picture (in some desktop keyboards the numbers row over the letters are also printed with symbols).
 - no one has ever died pressing space to get "~", and if he's using that for bash programming or similar tasks, he's probably savvy enough to hack an xmodmap file.

Thanks :)

Just to clarify - I do not have any particular opinion on this, lads. I just would love to see you all agreed on some single solution. BTW, since Brazilia is using Portuguese language - may be it is worth separate layout or at least variant? This could reduce the tension, you know...

So, some time has passed and this bug has stalled.

I guess that those of us who want a dead_tilde would accept it being in a "variant" instead of the main layout.  But please keep in mind that:

1) My mother language IS Spanish.  I live in Argentina and speak Spanish.

2) However, due to economic, regional and politic reasons I sometimes have to write things in Portuguese, because Brazil is a neighboring country with whom Argentina has a lot of trade (the same holds for many other Spanish speaking countries).

3) Also, it's now possible to register internet domains in Argentina with special characters that include the letters that I can't type with my keyboard.  Thus, I'll very soon be unable to access certain sites FROM MY COUNTRY directly by typing their URLs.

I think this is ridiculous and outrageous.  However, I do prefer getting a variant than the current state of affairs.

If a variant is created, then the same thing should be done for the "es" keyboard, cited in the other bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9763

Yes, having separate variant sounds like a viable option. The patch is welcome;)

> I guess that those of us who want a dead_tilde would accept it being in a
> "variant" instead of the main layout.  But please keep in mind that:

Margarita, would you be able to provide a patch for both latam and es variants?

I can do that.

Created attachment 21709 [details] [review]
Include "deadtilde" variant to latam and es layouts


Done.

The patch includes "deadtilde" variant in both keyboard layouts: es and latam.

Well, i am very happy with that solution, now I can use my es keyboard to
write in portuguese (and my latam keyboard arrives today!)

Maybe the name of variant isn't the best one. But is descritive.

Thanks!

Piter PUNK

The name is fine by me. Committed. Thanks Piter!