There is an update for the Georgian keyboard layout /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/ge_la created by Aiet Kolkhi <aietkolkhi@gmail.com>. It is downloadable on his site: http://aiet.qartuli.net/download/ge_la.gz Maybe the Georgian keyboard layout in xorg should be updated to Aiet Kolkhi's version?
Thank you Mike, for reporting this bug. The keyboard layout should indeed be updated. Also, there was a new ergonomic kyboard layout standard adopted in Georgia recently. I will create the file and submit it here too. And there is one more leyboard layout standard which is used by some users for Georgian. It is called Georgian typewriter standard and, as its name implies, was used on Georgian typewriters and is popular among people used to the typewriting machines. Strangely, the typewriter standard is the only one which comes with microsoft windows for Georgian.
The georgian layout was a bit changed in xkeyboard-config. Could you please check in CVS (or latest release) and provide a patch if it is still not ok?
Created attachment 9478 [details] This is the updated ge file, completely revised the existing layouts as well as added the other Georgian layouts in use today. I have completely rewritten the existing default "Georgian (qwerty)" and "Georgia - Russian" layouts, adding all the special characters and punctuation, reflecting recent changes in Georgian Unicode subrange. I have also added other important keyboard layouts: Georgian Ergonomic - The new Dvorak-like ergonomic layout standard created by experts group after thorough research of Georgian language and keyboard ergonomics. Georgian MESS - The layout used in Georgian educational institutions (mainly elementary and high schools), created by Georgian Ministry of Education and Science's Deer Leap project. Georgian AZERTY Tskapo - The popular Georgian AZERTY layout which is widely used by people living in France, Belgium and other "AZERTY"-based countries.
The detailed information regarding the layouts can also be found at http://www.gakartuleba.org/layouts/
Aiet, I see your changes are serious. Don't you think existing users are going to be unhappy or disturbed by those changes?
Thanks for your comments, Sergey. I have merely added three entirely new layouts which are in use today, so this will be very convenient for the users who need the layouts. I can not think of a reason why new layout could be inconvenient for anyone. Regarding the changes in two existing layouts (the default Georgian qwerty and Russian layouts): Russian layouts has not been changed, and in qwerty latin layout I have merely added special characters and needed punctuation in ALT zone and added Georgian quotations marks on ´key. So I have not changed the placement of any existing Georgian symbols, only added new symbols for the convenience of users, Until now, users did not have a chance to enter Georgian typographic quotes and some other characters needed for proper Georgian correspondence. The dashes used in Georgian have already been added in Alt zone (without replacing the hyphen and underscore), The exact same qwerty layout already comes with the commercial operating system as default Georgian layout and will soon come with other commercial OSs as well. There is one more existing layout, Russian, which has been part of Freedesktop since many years. While it is not very widely used, I think we should keep it, as it might be convenient for Georgian people living in Russia, as well as Russian people who speak Georgian but are familiar with Russian typewriter layout. The other layouts I have included have been pretty much standardized as well: MESS Layout (Ministry of Education and Science's Schools layout) is a standard used in every Georgian school (and over 98pc of them have open source OS installed :) Ergonomic layout is a result of hard work and collaboration between various experts, linguists and comparison between number of Georgian ergonomic layout proposals. This layout also comes with commercial operating systems. The third layout I have added is Azerty layout and is not a standard, but is widely used among Georgians or users of Georgian language in France, Belgium and other azerty countries. And if we consider the widespread of FLOSS in these countries, it would be very convenient if the layout worked out of the box, without downloading the layout extra and modifying the xml file by hand. Please note that the QWERTY, Ergonomic and MESS layouts have already been widely discussed on number of meetings and among community. We gave the layouts final 'go' on last meeting where language and IT experts, as well as community and Ministry of Education and Science representatives participated and agreed upon the layouts and enhancements. As a result, the layouts have been sent to commercial OSs and I am happy to submit them to Freedesktop. I am trying to keep this comment short, so if I have not covered your question or need more information, feel free to ask and I will be happy to elaborate.
There is no changes in "ru", true. But the default variant got all latin letters in capital (on the 2nd shift level). Which is very suspicious to me - it breaks the compatibility seriously. Could you please comment on this? Also, you completely replaced the original header of the file. Which dropped all CVS keywords and stuff. Could you please merge two headers together? As a final wish, I would appreciate the patch, not the final file, if possible:) Thanks
Yes, as the (qwerty) layout only occupies 6 keys with Georgian characters on 2nd shift level (on T, C, W, R, Z, S keys), the original layout had filled the remaining keys with latin lowercase letter. I can not think of a reason why this could be useful in Georgian. I have replaced this very keys with Latin capital letters as you noted, since Latin capitals are rarely used in Georgian (e.g. in case of Roman ordinals, etc.). This was the same reason Georgian Ministry of Education and Science placed the whole Latin capital alphabet on 2nd shift level in their MESSS layout (cf. the MESS layout in my attachment). Filling the unoccupied keys with 2nd shift level is not crucial for Georgian layout - the most important and needed enhancement was adding Georgian typographic quotes, Georgian special characters, degree, section and Numero sign, etc. without touching the original encoding and merely enhancing it with these for people who need them. Having some of Latin capitals on 2nd shift level would enable Georgian users input them without switching to say en-us layout, in seldom cases when they need to use them in Georgian when using Roman ordinals, etc. I see your concern regarding the compatibility though, and while I can not think of any use of the lowercase latin letters in Georgian layout, please advise me if you still think this could create compatibility concerns or be unethical for some reason and I will just revert the change and put Latin lowercase letters instead of capitals - as I have already noted, these are by far not the most important or useful part of Georgian layout. I am sorry I was unaware of the CVS header, I will be happy to provide with the patch as you asked :) Please advise regarding the Latin letters first. Also, if this will not be a compatibility issue and we replace latin lowercase with latin capitals, perhaps we should also 'upparcase' the latin letters in Russian layout? Unfortunately I do not know any user using the Russian layout, so was not able to receive any opinion on that in left the Russian layout intact. Thanks.
> Please advise regarding the Latin letters first. Also, if this will not be a > compatibility issue and we replace latin lowercase with latin capitals, perhaps > we should also 'upparcase' the latin letters in Russian layout? Unfortunately I > do not know any user using the Russian layout, so was not able to receive any > opinion on that in left the Russian layout intact. OK, after a bit of though and discussion with another Georgian guy, I would advise to create separate variant "latin_upper". It would keep the compatibility and allow to add "ru_upper" in a future (if someone wants it). Does it make sense? If so - I am looking forward to getting the patch;)
I have also consulted with a few language and l10n experts (Including famous l10n and language expert Mr. Vasil Kekelia) and they all seem to agree that it is incorrect to include Latin lowercase letters in Georgian layout, as they simply are not used in Georgian language. On the other hand, Latin capitals are indeed used for Roman numerals. And creating yet another layout in order to keep latin lowercase letters in Georgian layout does not seem reasonable. Let us wait a bit and try to get advice from more experts to make sure no mistake is made and eventually convert the Russian layout's latin part to uppercase too, or create separate layout as you suggested :)
> they simply are not used in Georgian language. > On the other hand, Latin capitals are indeed used for Roman numerals. > > And creating yet another layout in order to keep latin lowercase letters in > Georgian layout does not seem reasonable. I can confirm, that Latin lowercase letters are not in use when typing in Georgian, uppers case is used for some abbreviations and basically for Roman numbers.
Sergey, Noshrevan (aka:Aiet), I like Aiet's proposal. Thank you all for your work. Vladimer
Vladimir, thanks for sharing your opinion. Ok, let's call it consensus. Let it be uppercase. So, I am looking forward to getting the patch against xkeyboard-config CVS.
Thanks Sergey, Zviad and Vladimer. I am uploading the patch :) Sergey, as you requested, I have merged the headers to keep the CVS information. Please note that I have not touched the "ru" layout, as it would be nice to have some feedback in the future from people who actually use this layout.
Created attachment 9564 [details] [review] patch to xkbdesc/symbols/ge
So, finaly it is in CVS. Thanks a lot to everyone. And let's wait for the users' reaction:)
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