bug#40493: installer: Provide a way to select multiple keyboard layouts

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 07:12:34PM +0200, Mathieu Othacehe wrote:
> Now it would be nice to support multiple keyboard layout selection from
> the installer, so that a configuration like to one above is generated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mathieu

Ludo responded to the other bug:

On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 11:49:09AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Ideally we’d also offer a way to choose multiple layouts in the
> installer, so that one can end up with:
>
>   (keyboard-layout "ar,us" #:options '("grp:alt_shift_toggle"))
>

I believe the user should not have to manually select the other layout
(if the user wants they can select via F1 key).  Instead there should
be a sane default (typically U.S. layout).  But since I am used to
Latin script, I may not have good judgment.

IMHO two things should be done:

* Within the installer, a toggleable second keyboard layout should be
  available by default.

  Mathieu enabled changing the layout via the F1 help menu.  This is
  good and more flexible and discoverable, but a key combination is
  more convenient and people appear to be used to Alt+Shift toggling.

* In the config.scm created by the installer, the default
  keyboard-layout should include the second layout.

Both the config.scm default and the installer layout should be the
same, I think.

I attach a proposed solution for the first thing, though it does not
  yet update the toggle option correctly.  If you think the
approach is OK, then I will add more default alternative layouts to
the maybe-add-second-layout procedure.

> Although that’s mostly useful for the console as GDM and GNOME should be
> able to do the right thing.
> 
> Anyway, we can discuss it in a separate issue.
> 
> Ludo’.

The GNOME session after login will ask the user what keyboard layout
they want, but the (I believe changeable) default for GDM comes
from config.scm.

Regards,
Florian

0001-installer-Allow-Alt-Shift-toggle-from-non-Latin-keyb.patch
Description: Text document