Hello, Description of problem: The Red Hat Enterprise Linux (as well as Fedora) don't offer the two standardised layouts for the Romanian keyboard (neither at installation, in anaconda, nor afterwards, in System -> Administration -> Keyboard). Romanian keyboard arrangements are subject to the Romanian National Standard SR 13992:2004. The standard gives two arrangements for the Romanian keyboard (please see in the attached pictures): 1. the "primary" arrangement; 2. the "secondary" arrangement; For all new implementations, the *default* keyboard arrangement should be the *secondary* one (since the "primary" was implemented mainly because compatibility/historical reasons). Romanian-specific characters are obtained by pressing AltRight+character - adding Shift for the uppercase. A correct implementation for the Romanian keyboard should use the "comma-versions" of "s" and "t" (please see bug #329071), namely: - "S with comma below" (Unicode 0218) - "s with comma below" (Unicode 0219) - "T with comma below" (Unicode 021A) - "t with comma below" (Unicode 021B) Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install a fresh copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora; 2. During installation, at keyboard choosing screen, please observe there are no choices for "Romanian primary" or "Romanian secondary". 3. After installation, observe the same in System -> Administration -> Keyboard. Actual results: There are no implementations for the Romanian keyboard layout, as given in the Romanian National Standard SR 13992:2004. Expected results: Such implementations should be available, starting from the installation phase. To maintain denomination consistency with Windows implementations, the two layouts should be called: - "Romanian (Standard)" - the "primary" - "Romanian (Programmers)" - the "secondary", default when choosing "Romanian" as system language. Additional info: http://www.secarica.ro http://diacritice.sourceforge.net Many thanks, Răzvan
Created attachment 230741 [details] Primary layout for the Romanian keyboard
Created attachment 230751 [details] Secondary layout for the Romanian keyboard This should be the default layout when choosing "Romanian" as system language.
I'll provide the arrangements soon. Please hold a bit.
User pgraner's account has been closed
This ticket has a fix proposal in bug 253892
For text mode, this was fixed in bug 253892. For X, I'll address Xorg to change the default keymap as it exists, it's just not default.
Hello, Please, was that solved/included in the latest upgrades ? Namely: 1. Do we have the two keyboard arrangements, as standardised in the Romanian Standard SR 13992:2004, included in the system-config-keyboard list ? 2. Do the Unicode characters generated by keys correspond to the (correct) comma-below characters and not the (incorrect) cedilla-below ones, in both text mode and X mode ? Regards, Razvan
Just fyi, if Fedora/Red Hat doesn't modify the Xorg packages, this issue is in progress on xorg's bugzilla.
The issue was recently corrected in bug #13277 at freedesktop.org. Please see comments #82 and #83, with the appropriate patch: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13277 Would you please include this in Red Hat/Fedora ASAP, since it affects *thousands* of documents and webpages generated in Romanian language ? Thanks a lot, Răzvan
Hello, The patch at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13277 was commited/applied. It it will soon show up in the upstream code, so please include it into Red Hat / Fedora. Regards, Răzvan
*** Bug 329071 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Hello, Alex said that this is fixed in Fedora 9. Can you please sketch a step-by-step procedure to find out if/how is that fixed ? I'm running Fedora 9 Preview Release with all updates (upgraded from Fedora 8 via preupgrade) and I have three problems: - the graphical utility for setting the keyboard language (system-config-keyboard) is nowhere in the Gnome menus; - if invoked manually from a terminal, system-config-keyboard let me choose "Romanian" from the list, but that's all. There is no way to choose from the five possible settings, namely: a. Primary Romanian layout with comma-below characters b. Secondary Romanian layout with comma-below characters (should be DEFAULT for Romanian language) c. Primary Romanian layout with cedilla-below characters (compatibility mode still necessary) d. Secondary Romanian layout with cedilla-below characters (compatibility mode still necessary) e. Romanian Legacy/Martin Poehler (compatibility mode still necessary) - using AltGr+key in applications to generate diacritics, I'm still inserting cedilla-below characters (Thunderbird, mutt, OpenOffice.org, etc.). How do you suggest to fix all this ? Thanks a lot, Răzvan
For console mode, verify that: file /etc/sysconfig/keyboard has the following content: KEYBOARDTYPE="pc" KEYTABLE="ro" file /etc/sysconfig/i18n has the following content: LANG="ro_RO.UTF-8" SYSFONT="Lat2-Terminus16" The only place where you can set the console keymap is the language dialog that does not ofer a way to select alternative keymaps. You can edit the file /etc/sysconfig/keyboard replacing "ro" with "ro_std" for the primary romanian layout. Or run the command loadkeys /lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/ro_std.map.gz in a console, not in an X terminal. I decided to stop providing the layouts that allow use of the wrong s and t with cedilla instead of the correct s and t with comma. Reasons for this are: - people use the console to create directories - linux people use the console for linux, not for interacting with windows - stop propagating wrong characters For X mode, download this patch: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=16354 Open a terminal, go to /usr/share/X11/xkb. Run patch -p0 downloaded_file_above. Ignore any warnings. After this, you will have the following arrangements: setxkbmap ro - s and t with comma, secondary romanian layout setxkbmap ro std - s and t with comma, primary romanian layout setxkbmap ro cedilla - s and t with cedilla, secondary romanian layout setxkbmap ro std_cedilla - s and t with cedilla, primary romanian layout. You have to apply this patch manually, because it will take a while for xorg people to release Xorg, to be tested, then included in Fedora, then tested, then released.
Alex, I agree 100% with your comments. Only a few things to be more precise: - we need a mechanism to be 100% sure that the Terminus font (or whatever font is the default for Romanian) *is actually installed* when system is set to Romanian. IMHO, this would be the job of the system-config-language utility. - I 100% sustain your position of not using wrong characters (cedilla). However, there are situations where you will need to insert the cedilla characters (for example, you have an old document typed with cedillas and you don't want to modify it (for whatever reason, say fidelity) ); - we absolutely need a graphical utility like system-config-keyboard to set this Romanian keymap *and* their variants. One cannot expect a regular, non-technical user to hack /etc/sysconfig by hand. Point no. 3 above is what *this bug* is all about, in the first place. Friendly regards, Răzvan
Terminus font is part of kbd package - when kbd is installed, Terminus font is installed too. Old keymap (ro_win.map.gz) has been removed from kbd package, if there will be need to put it back - no problem. (I'm not sure, if it's removed from upstream tarball too or it's done only in Fedora.) Right keymap and font should be set during installation (if not, fill bug against anaconda, but if I remember correctly, Alexandru did it in the past). I'm not very familiar with X keyboard/font settings, but I assume this bug (or X org bug) is going to solve it.
Thank you, Viteslav ! IMHO, the critical things mentioned in comment #14 are points 1 and 3: As I learn from you, 1 is resolved already (as long as Terminus is the default font for Romanian). For 3, the graphical utility system-config-keyboard should present the user the option to set up not only the "Romanian" keyboard, but (at least) a. and b. in comment #12. (c., d., e. are discouraged by Alexandru; the opportunity of their presence is left to be discussed). But *please* insert a. and b. options in system-config-keyboard's list, with b. being the *default* one. Anaconda should do the same during install, if the system is set up to Romanian during installation. Thanks a lot, Răzvan
(In reply to comment #14) > Alex, I agree 100% with your comments. > > Only a few things to be more precise: > > - we need a mechanism to be 100% sure that the Terminus font (or whatever font > is the default for Romanian) *is actually installed* when system is set to > Romanian. IMHO, this would be the job of the system-config-language utility. As Vitezslav pointed, the font is always installed. > > - I 100% sustain your position of not using wrong characters (cedilla). However, > there are situations where you will need to insert the cedilla characters (for > example, you have an old document typed with cedillas and you don't want to > modify it (for whatever reason, say fidelity) ); The wrong cedillas are useless in console imho, worst, they will bring mayham if you create directories/files with diacritics and/or use passwords with them; it's important to make sure that in console mode we don't have 2 types of ș and ț. In graphic mode, the cedilla arrangement is available for selection in Gnome, KDE utilities. AFAIK Fedora or RHEL does not provide a utility to choose the keyboard layout, probably because GNOME and KDE have such nice programs for this anywat. > > - we absolutely need a graphical utility like system-config-keyboard to set this > Romanian keymap *and* their variants. One cannot expect a regular, non-technical > user to hack /etc/sysconfig by hand. Configuring the system is the job of a system administrator (you need root privileges right?). Configuring the GNOME or KDE or whatever desktop manager is used is the job of a regular user. GNOME, KDE, XFCE, the most used desktop managers offer a way to select a keyboard layout through a nice program or an applet. I think system-config-keyboard hacks the xorg.conf file (graphic mode) and system-config-language writes the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard file (console mode). I also think that system-config-keyboard reads the keymaps from x files somewhere. Vitezslav, am I correct ?
Hello, I'm just trying to resume here what I think it should be done for this bug: - *have* a menu-based tool that changes the keyboard layout (be it the actual system-config-keyboard or another tool provided by Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.); - we should have such a tool available in *both X and text mode* (one graphical-based, one ncurses-based, like system-config-keyboard and system-config-keyboard-tui); - for the Romanian language, this tool should present the user two menu options, corresponding to the keyboard arrangements in the Romanian national standard: "Romanian - primary" and "Romanian - secondary". - both these arrangements should generate *comma-below* characters when pressing keys s/S ans t/T with Romanian diacritics; - *if* some user only chooses "Romanian" in system-config-language and does not explicitly set the keyboard arrangement in system-config-keyboard, the "Romanian - secondary" keyboard arrangement should be the default. Regards, Răzvan
Răzvan, I just provided a patch to solve this for Fedora in bug 450381. You can close this bug and clone the bug 450381 for Red Hat Enterprise. The patch will put 4 keyboard arrangements in the list of system-config-keyboard (the 2 standardized and the 2 obsolete with cedillas)
Despite the fact I'm the reporter, it seems I'm not allowed to close this bug. Jay, would you please close it as CLOSED DUPLICATE 450381 ? Thanks, Răzvan
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 450381 ***