Fwd: Help with collecting keyboard data

[Chris Leonard]

OLPC devs,

I'm not sure exactly what is happening upstream with keyboards in
GNOME, but this looks like there might be an opportunity to upstream
some of the special local keyboard variations carried by Sugar / OLPC,
or at least get them "officially" registered in the GNOME database of
keyboard layouts.

cjl


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Re: Help with collecting keyboard data
To: Allan Day <allanpday at gmail.com>
Cc: GNOME i18n list <gnome-i18n at gnome.org>


On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Allan Day <allanpday at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> GNOME uses a database that maps keyboard layouts to countries and
> languages. This is used to try and guess which layouts will be
> interesting to users depending on their country and language.
>
> Unfortunately, this database has a lot of gaps. To try and fix this,
> we are trying to collect information about which keyboard layouts
> people use, so we have a more complete database. This will hopefully
> let us make better guesses about keyboard layouts.
>
> It would be great if translation contributors could help us out with
> this. It's very simple: just check out the instructions on the
> keyboard data wiki page [1] and fill in the table with any information
> you might have about which layouts are used.
>
> This wiki page is still quite new, so just let me know if you have any
> problems or are unsure about anything.
>
> Thanks in advance for you help!
>
> Allan Day
>
> [1] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/KeyboardData
>

Dear Allan,

OLPC (and Sugar Labs) get into the keyboard creation business with
some regularity.  I see a few "olpc" keyboards on your list, but for a
more complete listing see:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Keyboard_layouts

There may be some layouts for languages you don't have already (albeit
for OLPC keyboard configs).

You are only looking for XKB layouts?

With the touchscreen version of the XO laptop (XO-4) due to be
announced any day now (at CES, I think) there is a lot of effort going
into Maliit on-screen keyboard layouts

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Garycmartin/Maliit_Layouts

With two million XO laptops out there, and given that the OLPC OS is
running the Sugar UI on a GNOME/Fedora stack and offering a GNOME
desktop as a dual-boot option, you'll have to make your own calls
about how important they are to include, but you might want to touch
base with the OLPC devs via

http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel

if there are any questions, if only because by the nature of the OLPC
/ Sugar Labs mission, we deal with some "exotic" language options and
collaborate with a lot of language communities just starting to "plant
their flag" on Linux (e.g. new locales, etc.).

Warmest Regards,

cjl
Sugar Labs Translation Team Coordinator