Bug 9752

According to what I see, none of German variants have tilde in the first (or even second) shift level. But you could try nodeadkeys variant - so you'd have to press 2 keys instead of 3.

(In reply to comment #1)
> According to what I see, none of German variants have tilde in the first (or
> even second) shift level. But you could try nodeadkeys variant - so you'd have
> to press 2 keys instead of 3.
> 


Thanks for your fast reply.

You can see the german layout on this picture: http://www.uni-regensburg.de/EDV/Misc/KeyBoards/keys11l.jpg

For tilde you usually have to press "Alt-Gr" and at the same time once the key where "+" "*" and "~" are located. But in the xming windows I have to press the key with the three symbols two times before it is displayed. When I open Xemacs I can't even type tilde at all.

What do you mean with "nodeadkeys variant"? What do I have to do? I'm pretty new to all that stuff...

> For tilde you usually have to press "Alt-Gr" and at the same time once the key
> where "+" "*" and "~" are located. But in the xming windows I have to press the
> key with the three symbols two times before it is displayed. When I open Xemacs
> I can't even type tilde at all.
Actually, there might be a problem with these particular applications (BTW Emacs is famous to be shitty in XKB department). What about other apps?

> What do you mean with "nodeadkeys variant"? What do I have to do? I'm pretty
> new to all that stuff...
In your XKB configuration, try using "de(nodeadkeys)" instead of "de".

While the "nodeadkeys" variant is often preferred by programmers, I think the default de-"basic" layout should conform to the German DIN 2137 standard for keyboards.
This states that only french accent keys (circumflex ^, acute ´, grave `) are dead keys, but not the tilde ~ key. This is also the correct behavior in Windows with the "German (Germany) - German" setting.
It is currently not possible to select such a variant in Linux as the "basic" variant has "dead_tilde" enabled and "deadgraveacute" is missing a "dead_circumflex".

See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Germany_and_Austria_.28but_not_Switzerland.29>

Personally I do not mind changing dead_tilde to tilde - but I am not German. I would like to hear some other opinions on that subject - preferably from other Germans. dead_tilde is used in many Compose sequences, so I do not want to frustrate people without serious reason.

What about dead_graveacute and dead_circumflex? I see them in German layout, keys AE12 and TLDE.

no updates

My opinion as a German is that there should be a setting that conforms to the DIN norm.  Actually, that setting should be the default for de.

Reopening.

> My opinion as a German is that there should be a setting that conforms to the
> DIN norm.  Actually, that setting should be the default for de.
The default setting for any country should be whatever most of the people are using (usually it is some layout from MSWin). Is it absolutely same as DIN?

If national standard de-juro is different from the standard de-facto, I am willing to commit another variant. We have that scenario with the Ukraine.

For comparison, here's the default Windows keyboard layout for "German":
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/goglobal/keyboards/kbdgr.html

As defined in the German DIN standard, only the french accent keys (circumflex, acute, and grave) are dead keys (orange color), but not the tilde key (AltGr and +).

> As defined in the German DIN standard, only the french accent keys (circumflex,
> acute, and grave) are dead keys (orange color), but not the tilde key (AltGr
> and +).
In that case, the current default "de" layout is compatible with DIN. Would it be ok to close this bug report then?

Hi. I assume this is the most recent version of the "de" layout?
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/tree/symbols/de

If de(basic) is the default variant, then it looks to me as if line 29
key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   dead_tilde,  dead_macron ]	};
would have to be changed (in accordance with line 63 of "nodeadkeys") to
key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde,       macron ]	};
in order to have tilde not be a dead key?

Sorry, you are right. Anyone would have any objections?

(In reply to comment #12)
> Sorry, you are right. Anyone would have any objections?

I also have a german end-user requesting that tilde not be a dead key in the german keyboard layout, (see [1] and following, and excuse my xkeyboard-config ignorance), so changing the default so tilde is not a deadkey, or adding an option for that, seems like a good idea.

[1] http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2011-08/msg00040.html

Ok, committed that fix. Please check

Please reconsider this change! It is quite harmful to change the standard keyboard layout that exists with this behavior for years. After a silent update in my system from 2.6 to 2.7 I almost recognized immediately that I could no longer enter "ñ" and got strange results when typing the command:

ls ~ /tmp

Imagine this would have been "rm -rf"! Sorry, but this change is embarrassing and dangerous. If the other behavior is wanted, a new variant "DIN" could have been added, but now my only choice is a downgrade. Using 2.7 is not an option for me - at all!

(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #12)
> > Sorry, you are right. Anyone would have any objections?
> 
> I also have a german end-user requesting that tilde not be a dead key in the
> german keyboard layout, (see [1] and following, and excuse my
> xkeyboard-config ignorance), so changing the default so tilde is not a
> deadkey, or adding an option for that, seems like a good idea.
> 
> [1] http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2011-08/msg00040.html

I'm using a German keyboard layout too. But I need sometimes ~n. It seems quite dangerous AND stupid to change a behavior that is known and proven for many years. 


(In reply to comment #13)
> Ok, committed that fix. Please check
Sorry, but I don't think so. Please revert that 'fix'.

(In reply to comment #16) 
> I'm using a German keyboard layout too. But I need sometimes ~n.

I think you should be able to still type 'ñ' with compose key sequences such as 'Compose, n, ~'.

I would prefer to stick to Windows and DIN standard (especially if they are exactly same). Do I understand that right that in both Windows and DIN tilde is not dead character?

Hi there, 

In http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2011-08/msg00040.html the objective was to adopt cygwin to windows. I love Cygwin and use it every day at work. But I don't think it's a good idea to turn the linux behavior into the windows one. I'm using Linux because it isn't behaving like Windows. I would prefer to have the ~ deadkey in Windows or Cygwin too.

But same as joehni I noticed some weeks ago, that ñ didn't work anymore. I thought by myself, it could be a bug. I'm using Gentoo and xorg-server-1.13 was still marked as unstable. A few months later this behavior became annoying. And therefore I was searching. I stumbled into a thread in a debian-forum how to use setxkbmap. Didn't work. After more searching I found this bug report. 

To make the story short: It's a breaking change. A lot of people were used to the old behavior. I guess, like me, many people think, the new behavior is a bug. And to create a special key sequence on all my computers to be able to write a ñ, is not really nice. 

Another argument:
For the people who don't want dead-keys exists xkbvariant nodeadkeys. In this layout you don't have to press to keys in sequence to get ~. A ç isn't used more often than a ñ. Now we have nodeadkeys twice and lost the default deadkeys. It's definitly no win-win situation. 

If you really need nodeadkeys and notildedeadkeys, then create this xkbvariant as a additional layout, but please, don't remove the old behavior.!

Hi,

(In reply to comment #18)
> I would prefer to stick to Windows and DIN standard (especially if they are
> exactly same). Do I understand that right that in both Windows and DIN tilde
> is not dead character?

the default German keyboard layout on Windows and the DIN norm definitely do not have 'tilde' as a dead key (I'm using this layout right now). Pressing the ~ key directly results in a ~ character. Only ´ ` ^ are dead keys.

The layouts 'nodeadkeys' and 'deadgraveacute' are not valid alternatives, as they do not show the desired behavior.

I personally am far more likely to use the 'tilde' key for specifying a directory on Linux than needing the ñ character. There are several words in the German dictionary requiring French accents, but I can't think of one requiring a Spanish accent right now.

Please at least include a new DIN variant if this behavior cannot be kept as standard.

Thank you for taking this issue serious, this has been affecting a lot of German users for quite some time.

Ok, I guess, with the arguments on both sides we won't get a result, which is suitable for everyone. 

One last thing: 
joehni wrote:

(In reply to comment #15)
> got strange results when typing the command:
> 
> ls ~ /tmp
> 
> Imagine this would have been "rm -rf"! Sorry, but this change is
> embarrassing and dangerous. If the other behaviour is wanted, a new variant
> "DIN" could have been added,

If you type ~ in the console outside of X, you'll notice, that this character is still handled as a deadkey. So at the moment we have a different behaviour between X and non-X. Joehni's argument with "rm ~ /tmp -rf" is real, if you switch from time to time to the console outside of X. Think about this. 

Of course I respect the argument with the DIN norm too. So my proposal:

Offer 3 variants:
* default: tilde as nodeadkey, accents and grave as deadkey (current default) according to DIN.
* nodeadkeys: current variant for people that don't want deadkeys
* tildedeadkeys: previous default behaviour for backwards compatibility. 

A very important thing would be to make that breaking change public. E.g. in Gentoo exits a news system on updates. If there's something like this, you'll get a message on a update. I guess in all the other distributions there exits something similar. This change drove me crazy for some weeks until I found the reason for this "bug".

I am ok with 3 variants. I would the old default not "tildedeadkeys" but "legacy". The patch is welcome!

Created attachment 71289 [details] [review]
Patch for symbols/de with new mode legacy and dead tilde

As proposed I made a patch to introduce the legacy mode, which provides the previous standard behaviour. 

The name "legacy" for the new mode is quite correct, but doesn't say exactly something about the behaviour. Maybe you should consider a more meaningful name. 

Please check, if the patch meets your requirements for code quality and if it works correctly. 

Furthermore it would be find, if you could inform the maintainers of the main distributions (Debian, Arch, Suse, Gentoo, ...) about the change of the default mode and the introduction of the legacy variant. It was quite difficult for me to find the reason for the different behaviour. 

Thanks so far.

Committed, with some minor changes.

Dear maintainers of xkeyboard-layout,

I come to this thread, as I see, a bit late, and I can notice, things has been running "out of rails".

As many other in this thread, I cannot be satisfied, with the way you have solved things.

The main reason for changing "GERMAN" layout behaviour regarding to "Tilde" has been the complaints of "low-level users" or "programmers", which use the "tilde or approximate sign" in a mathematical or Linux-OS means.

Other stream of users make use of the same "GERMAN" keyboard for typing literal texts in "European Latin languages", for accentuation of characers as "a", "o", "n" etc.

I still can't understand WHY DIN 2137-2 in its latest revision has changed its definition in a wrongly "M$ Windows" way...
This question I have just placed to the DIN 2137-2 responsible person, and I am awaiting his reply.

Now, what we "USERS" expect from YOU xkeyboard-maintainers is the RIGHT decision on the definition of layouts for the german keyboard.

My concerning here IS. What will happen with a layout named "GERMAN (LEGACY)"?
Will it exist forever with this WRONG/BAD/ANNOYING/MEANLESS naming?
Are you really aware of the problems which arose/arise with this change?
In my distribution, using Gnome this "LEGACY-Layout" was (under Gnome) left FORGOTTEN, and can only be found if the user searches for anything among many many entries.
Myself, I was helpless during long time searching for the solution to my "Tilde-problem"...

So, please. Get this subject back to discussion, and give us a reasonable solution, including DIN into the whole discussion.

Yours Faithfully,
careca

I do not see anything to discuss here. If both DIN and MSWin agree sone some default layout - we are using it here, as most familiar to users and matching the standard de-jure. For unhappy people there is "legacy" variant.

If DIN would go agains MSWin -that could be some tough choice. But luckly for us they are in sync.

One thing you oversaw with this change was the macron, which is used for a number of languages and not affected by the DIN 2137 standard. It should have been left untouched for this change.

So instead of
key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde,       macron ]	};
for the basic layout the line should be
key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde,  dead_macron ]	};

Please fix that bit, it interfered with me entering proper romanization for Japanese.

I also agree that "dead tilde" would be a better descriptor for the alternate mode, as another situation where an accutomed behavior becomes a legacy one in the future.

(In reply to Anton from comment #27)
> One thing you oversaw with this change was the macron, which is used for a
> number of languages and not affected by the DIN 2137 standard. It should
> have been left untouched for this change.
> 
> So instead of
> key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde,       macron ]	};
> for the basic layout the line should be
> key <AD12>	{ [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde,  dead_macron ]	};
> 
> Please fix that bit, it interfered with me entering proper romanization for
> Japanese.
> 
> I also agree that "dead tilde" would be a better descriptor for the
> alternate mode, as another situation where an accutomed behavior becomes a
> legacy one in the future.

Tim, Sven and others - could you please comment on that? Before reverting that line, I would like to hear other opinions.

Unnecessarily changing a keyboard layout that millions of users were accustomed to for decades and without unanimous consensus was one of the worst ideas ever, especially if a character as dangerous as a tilde in Unix is involved.

Even if not public, there are many accidents where people typed "rm -rf ~ /..." in place of "rm -rf ~/..." after an update, causing damage that can be summed up to thousands if not millions of Euros / Dollars.

It would be ok to offer an additional DIN layout, but if you do, then do confirm to the DIN standard not only in the tilde key but in all AltGR keys: "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2%20(Tastaturbelegung)" The current basic layout is far away from that!

So please DO revert the "fix", regarding both tilde and macron, it is worth the new change even after this time. So many bug reports in all the bug tracking systems of all the Unix distributions are enough reason to do so. Search for "Tilde Deutsch (veraltet)" to see them.

Since I do not have personal opinion, I would like the people to reach consensus here. Alternatively, some of you could create some poll on some German Linux-related site - and see what German-speaking people see. I do not want to make any changes without having at least some degree of confidence. Otherwise it will go back and forth (and I cannot make informed decision since I am not using any German layout).

I am German, and I am working with Linux as a professional starting with SuSE 4.4 in 1996. Until now the tilde key _always_ was a dead key. I can type blindly with 300 to 600 keystrokes per minute, of course only if the keyboard layout never changes. So this change is a disaster because I cannot type blindly anymore because there may be different keyboard mappings active on the hundreds of computers I administer even if they all have standard German keyboards. This considerably slows down work. Time is money!

As most people, I am not always hunting for the newest version. Stability is far more important. For me, the computer is a tool that has to work. I was hit by this bug just now when upgrading my workstation from Xubuntu 12.04 LTS to Xubuntu 16.04 LTS and it cost me a day of expensive working time, to find this "bugfix" being the ultimate reason for this unexpected change. No release note, no change notice, nothing has warned me regarding this fundamental change.

You will never reach a consensus here, for the same reason why there are multiple keyboard layouts in the world: Different people prefer different keyboard layouts.

A Unix newcomer can select the keyboard layout he likes. But newcomers should not force experienced professionals to adapt to new keyboard layouts without urgent need.

So you should stick with the traditional setting as default and offer alternative settings as what they are, i.e. as alternatives. And the three (!) DIN layouts are alternatives only. You are completely free to enhance the default layout by adding new mappings, but do not change existing mappings. A regular update must never unexpectedly change the keyboard layout, especially for often used keys!

There is a proverb: »Don't do to others what you don't want to be done to you«. I do not demand from you to get accustomed to a new keyboard layout, so you should not demand from millions of Germans to get accustomed to a new keyboard layout. But currently you are doing so.

So please do revert this catastrophic change. Thank you for your understanding.

Rainer, could you please answer some questions:
1. What to people coming from MSWin expect as default German layout - in general and in relation to tilde key, dear tilde or not?
2. Same as #1 but for MacOS
3. Same as #1 but regarding DIN standard.
If the answers to these 3 questions are exactly same (at least about the tilde key) - THAT is going to be the default tilde behaviour. If that behaviour does not match what Linux provided for decades - you can you/fix/improve the 'legacy' variant, it was created exactly for that purpose.

Once more I want to reinforce what I already commented before and what has just been said by Rainer.

No reason to change standard behaviour of German mapping.

Never the less, even if it should/had to be done, please at least name the new mapping NOT as "legacy" but as something more reasonable as "German dead-keys + tilde".

Legacy is SOMETHING mean less, and may fall in the trash as soon as, even you yourself, don't anymore remember what does it in fact means.

> Rainer, could you please answer some questions:

of course

> 1. What to people coming from MSWin expect as default German layout - in general and in relation to tilde key, dear tilde or not?

A tilde is rarely used in German, not at all in punctuation, only when composing foreign letters or special mathematical formulas. And it is not used in any special meaning by the Windows operating system. So only very few Windows users ever use the tilde key. So most people coming from windows will expect nothing because they have never used the tilde before.

> 2. Same as #1 but for MacOS

German MacOS keyboard layout has no tilde at all, see "https://goingtolalaland.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/img_1122.jpg", you have to type Alt+n to get a tilde, see "http://www.tippscout.de/tilde-mac_tipp_5321.html", and the whole layout is clearly different from both windows and linux, e.g. it uses Alt+L in place of AltGr+Q for the @ sign as you can see on the image.

> 3. Same as #1 but regarding DIN standard.

I have never seen a keyboard implementing the DIN standard completely before. But even If I consider you could have be right taking away the dead tilde from Altgr++, then it would have been an absolute must to put it to AltGR+I as in the DIN standard to keep it available. But you didn't, you have removed the dead tilde completely (or hidden it at a place where nobody can find it).

> If the answers to these 3 questions are exactly same (at least about the tilde key) - THAT is going to be the default tilde behaviour.

You can see that they all differ completely. There is no common mapping across systems at all. So there was absolutely no need to change the well-established Linux mapping.

Please do revert that "bugfix", it has fixed no bug at all, it was no progress at all, and it has no advantage at all except for fewest newcomers from onle one of the other systems, but substantial disadvantage for millions of existing users. If the change would have made Linux conform to a common mapping across most systems, I would been able to agree to that change. But it didn't.

Even if my reasons do not convince you, the huge amount of bug reports with all the Unix distributions regarding this change should convince you that this change was really, really bad and that reverting is well justified even after this long time.

> If that behaviour does not match what Linux provided for decades - you can you/fix/improve the 'legacy' variant, it was created exactly for that purpose.

I know, and I have already reverted the "bugfix" on my systems. But you are generating unnecessary work for thousands of German system administrators. Not all of them have the time for it, so you are really splitting the German Linux world into two separating worlds regarding a very important key for the Linux command line.

Everybody is kindly invited to add a Windows mapping as an alternative, and a DIN mapping, the same way the Macintosh mapping has already been added. But do not touch the heavily needed keys of the default mapping!

And if you change the default for new users: An update must never change existing key mappings!

And even worse: The wording "legacy" and by far even more the German translation "veraltet" officially provided by your team, a word meaning not "legacy" but "outdated, obsolete" (see www.linguee.de), indicates the definite intention to remove that mapping later, so you are discouraging from selecting that mapping. See careca's comments.

I changed de(legacy) to de(deadtilde), with the new description too. Hope that is the reasonable solution. At least it looks like a mid-way solution.

Regarding the name change from de(legacy) to de(deadtilde):

Bearing in mind that the disastrous change from deadtilde to asciitilde has been made more than four years ago and that most distributions have adopted this change already, the harm - there are two different default German keyboard mappings on Linux computers in the wild now - has already been done and I must reluctantly accept that the genie is out of the bottle and it cannot be pushed back inside again.

So changing the variant name from legacy to deadtilde is probably the only rectification causing no further harm. So: Thank you for this change. I hope the German translators this time do a better work. (If you send me the new description, I can provide a German translation.)

(And please please do never again change any keyboard layout in any language being in use for decades; esp. if keys so important for system administrators and programmers are involved!)

I come here after I seen the difference in the keyboard layout file between the old default layout and the new default layout. It has caught my interest because I had remembered that the keyboard configuration menus have differentiated between a legacy one and a new one merely by the tilde. I have realized the same day that the once-so-called legacy German keyboard layout is obviously better than the altered one because it allows to use diacritic tilde and diacritic macron while the spacing versions are returned by taking advantage of the Compose table by mere pressing the keys twice. Now I have opened the bugtracker to investigate the history, to fathom the likely lamentable policy pushed through, to check if my preconception be wrong.

And after carefully reading what has been written here, I have only strengthened my conception. It is not a matter of taste, and the altered layout is so obviously flumadiddle that I call to drop the introduced default again because it disturbs mental sanity by its nature.

I have now used the German standard keyboard layout on Linux for more than two years and can perceive myself as brain-damaged because of two years writing U+007E by just pressing ⟨AD12⟩ with AltGr once, not twice. The reason for this is the inconsistency lying in the fact that the acute and back tick at ⟨AE12⟩ and the cirumflex at ⟨TLDE⟩ are dead keys and produce their spacing editions by being pressed twice also. The knowledge being protuberant that all the mentioned signs, acute, grave, circumflex, and tilde, are originally meant to be diacritics, it is incomprehensible that acute, grave, and circumflex are implemented as dead keys and the tilde appears instantly when being pressed. And this does only mention the diacritics commonly pictured on keyboards. The other diacritics are all implemented as dead keys in the German keyboard layout. It therefore aligns better with reason if the tilde is a dead key too.

The so-called “DIN norm” applied to computer keyboard layouts is a crack fic. A private lobby organization employs some wretches with meager success in the actual economy where they could perceive what different systems actually exist to writhe some red tape. Every actual official on duty would prefer to have the dead_tilde on ⟨AD12⟩ – after all another possibility of writing, whereas pressing the key twice to get the spacing version is perfectly acceptable under this rationale. Remember that the tilde key mapping cannot have a significant typewriter history anyhow: This spacing character mapping comes from a time when you pressed backspace to print a diacritic onto an already printed character, therefore placing its spacing version on the ⟨AD12⟩ key in the computer age is pure arbitrary.

Of course, like many of such “consulting” agencies, the opera of the DIN locums, who are in the fortunate position to have an official nimbus around them because of a protracted fostering of old boy networks, always have horrible costs of obtention. So hardly anybody who makes claims about their splendid qualities is actually in the position to do so, because it is just unfeasable to read them if your endeavor is not that of exploiting people like a government does. And the next corrupt government possibly abandons that parasite organization and suddenly the norms become null. Like the improvised norm always had to be non-existent.

In short it tells us this: Why should we care about some norm that is half-secret and half-bad? I mean, it is explicitized in this thread why “key <AD12> {[plus, asterisk, asciitilde, macron ]};” instead of “key <AD12> {[plus, asterisk, dead_tilde, dead_macron ]};” is awful. It inutilizes a capital key in system administration by breaking with tradition and consistency. The change devalues the brands of the free desktops by bending down to Microsoft’s rogue practices.

The norm may be dropped, Microsoft may revise its keyboard layout, because the tilde as dead key is more useful than as spacing characters (being mapped as producing the spacing version by just being double-pressed), using Microsoft Windows at all might become uncommon as the year of the Linux desktop has arrived, and by the way Microsoft Windows in its current version is presumably illegal in most civilized countries with data protection laws, so you are arguing with criminal practices if you give away on Microsoft – to serve posterity fairly, the free keyboard system should pursue the most reasonable layout, not the imposed one, for imposition is meaningless, reason is eternal.

In any case we should take care not to contradict ourself, which is what happens with the X11-based systems right now in Germany in handling the ⟨AD12⟩ key, because XKB bears the spacing tilde at its third level while the virtual terminals outwith X11 still bear the dead tilde in it. Try it in a TTY, dear г-н Udaltsov: “sudo loadkeys de-latin1” – that sets the keymap used on TTYs in Germany for the current session. So it is still not to late to revert the keyboard schism.

Thus, as it stands, the deadtilde layout has to be the default one, with the current entry for it replaced by an include statement, and the “Windows” one has to be removed completely, for it should never have existed, being contrary to typing facts. Present new habits to write spacing tilde with one keypress are awkward according to what I have described and pressing the key twice to obtain the spacing tilde does feel better instantly even for those who have been forced to use the inconsistent layout because they haven’t known better because the aha effect enlivens. Take me: I have realized the difference by serendipity by looking into the layout file and instantly switched to the traditional behaviour. Really, I have just jumped into the Linux world in March 2015, I am not just obdurate in this matter. I use the traditional layout because dead_tilde and dead_macron in the layout are simply more useful than asciitilde and macron in general. Programmers have their accentless layout or use a non-German layout completely, if they need keys commonly implemented as dead keys too frequently and on the other hand do not need accents, but for most computer appliances it is smooth to press the dead key twice. Whereas nothing speaks for keeping the mixed keyboard layout resulting from the often-cited standard. Again, who knows what is set elsewhere? People come to use free desktops because they want to learn, and in the unlikely case that the dead tilde surprises anyone, he does appreciate it if he owns himself to conceive its use.

I am willing to send a patch to fix the layout hierarchy after #102225 is merged into the git repository, which is a patch I have posted two days ago enabling the dead_belowmacron in the German layout in a place without symbol now.

We don’t need any questionnaires on Linux sites which are non-representative and partially directed to people who to a great part do not know the issue in its whole extent. I have proven a priori that the change is obnoxious and needs to be reverted, preempting all arguments. There is no standard, there is no significant preacclimation to a spacing tilde on ⟨AD12⟩. Two guys have cast a red herring about standard behaviour and have disappeared, caricaturing German bureaucracy, and the unassuming Sergey Udaltsov has introduced a bug as default keyboard layout configuration because of a thus-composed biased picture of the necessity of the change. Contrary to that, it is rather necessary that the change is reverted. We should put the key back to its customary state, and everyone who wants to get the spacing tilde back into the default shall be ridiculized after that for the misconception that his and his fellows’ habits should trump functionality, whereas right now those who have interests, those who have practice in administering unix-like computers using text terminals and those who have invested in proficiency in other languages where the tilde is used inside the very language – and I think not only Germans, but the entire Unix sphere, because the German keyboard layout in the XKB has been such a mighty tool for writing anything in Latin letters –, univocally bewail the bereavement of the dead tilde in the flagship layout and are muffled in dudgeon.

I have been a Linux user since 1996 and this deadtilde issue is among the top 10 annoyances I had in my user and admin experience.

The DIN norm 2137-01:2018-12 was changed in 2018 and Microsoft happily ignores the E1 layout, i.e. the so-called extended layout which carries more than just the most basic characters. Yet upon the original bug reporter's request and justified by the DIN norm in 2012 not specifying tilde as dead key, the decade-old proven input method for the ñ or Ñ letters were taken away from ordinary users. There are 100 millions of German speakers and 40 millions of Spanish speakers in Europe alone, the forums are full of questions how to enter those signs. While Mac users have a simple way (not conforming to the DIN norm) and Microsoft users can enter with Alt plus a code they have to remember (not conforming to the DIN norm), Linux users with a default setup cannot enter those letters at all!

The deadtilde option is _not_ listed in KDE settings so even if they find out how to "fix" their setup, they need to dig around X key maps.

I ask you to follow the DIN norm and update the default German layout to the current version:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/E1_(Tastaturbelegung)

Thanks, 

Mark

P.S. The original bug reporter Tim would have been served by the nodeadkey variant.

Regarding comment #38

TL;DR: *** No, do not change existing layouts. Add a new layout variant. ***

Mark: I agree the situation is most annoying. But what you are asking for would annoy many existing users again. So please do not propose to make the same huge mistake (changing an existing layout) a second time!

If you propose to add a new layout variant that conforms to the cited standard, you are very welcome! But this does not belong in this ticket but in a new feature request ticket.