Subject: Re: bug#37897: Bug: Resetting locale settings

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 22:51:33 +0100

Hi,

[email-masked] skribis:

> Hello ludo, hey guys,

Guys and gals.  :-)

> I realised that when I dont specify WHICH KIND of german keyboard
> layout I have, the problem does not occur. That is, if I use the
> (keyboard-layout (keyboard-layout "de")), I dont have any problems.

Oh I see, the “variant” part is indeed the problem.

> ;;  (keyboard-layout (keyboard-layout "de" "latin1-nodeadkeys"))

If we build verbosely, we see:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
building /gnu/store/r3pibry4qsyfs090fcxglvfr52vfq3cx-console-keymap.de.drv...
WARNING: Can not find "latin1nodeadkeys" in "de".
WARNING: Unknown X keysym "dead_belowmacron"
WARNING: Unknown X keysym "dead_belowmacron"
WARNING: Unknown X keysym "dead_belowmacron"
WARNING: Unknown X keysym "dead_belowmacron"
successfully built /gnu/store/r3pibry4qsyfs090fcxglvfr52vfq3cx-console-keymap.de.drv
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

IOW, under the hood, the ‘ckbcomp’ program, which converts from XKB to
console layout data, wans us that it doesn’t know anything about
“latin1nodeadkeys” and then goes on to ignore the issue.  I’m not sure
how to avoid that.

As noted in
<https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Keyboard-Layout.html>,
the list of supported keyboard variants is to be found in the
‘xkeyboard-config’ package:

  less $(guix build xkeyboard-config)/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.xml

Though I have to admit that it’s not user-friendly.

Anyway, I’m closing the bug for now, but please to reopen it if you
think further discussion is needed (or email [email-masked]).

Thank you!

Ludo’.