[Localization] German and French keyboard layouts

[Edward Cherlin]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:45 PM, Nicholas Bodley <nbodley at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
> {NB, from previous message}
>
> I'd love to know what was done for French and German keyboard countries;
> an off-list reply is OK with me, but might be of interest to the whole
> list.
>
> Edward Cherlin said, off-list:
>> G1G1 shipped with US International keyboards only. They couldn't manage
>> the SKUs.
>
> Without more information, that seems strange. Afaik, we have a Nepalese
> keyboard layout, yet we couldn't manage a German layout, which might be
> standard in roughly 15 countries?

Technically, no problem. Logistically, a nightmare.

> Good grief! I surely have no dislike at
> all for Nepal; it's a developing country, but, I'm sure, has a much
> smaller number of people than are in countries that use the German layout.

But many more XOs are to be shipped to Nepal than to any
German-speaking country.

> (From what I know about Nepal, some really-encouraging things are
> happening there. It's looking like a significant success story.
> Naturally, I'm well aware of Uruguay, also inspiring.)
>
> Something's missing. Surely this decision was not due to marginal
> competence, ineptness, or misjudgment? Desperation is even more unlikely,

All of those have been factors in OLPC's problems at one time or another.

> but, failure to properly plan ahead, maybe?

OLPC will create keyboards for countries that order XOs in quantity.
They were not prepared to create 40 or more layouts for every country
in G1G1, with no advance information on how many of each would be
needed, and decided not to create any new ones, or even to order
keyboards for supported European languages. Some of this has to do
with Amazon policy and Federal Trade Commission regulations on the
maximum time between accepting orders and shipping the product,
combined with the lack of determinate scheduling at the factory, as a
condition for getting the lowest prices on parts. Some of it is that
even for the same language, keyboard layouts vary by country on such
matters as currency symbols.
-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)