[haiku-development] Re: Keymaps
- From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 18:08:25 -0400
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 5:15 PM, pulkomandy <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 04:38:34PM -0400, John Scipione wrote:
> > OK. Perhaps not for R1 then, I am really just trying to solve the problem
> > that if you select Russian as your keymap in ROBP, you need to figure out
> > how to add KeymapSwitcher and add a Latin keymap before you can use the
> > Terminal to install the KeymapSwitcher optional package, so first you
> need
> > to figure out how to switch your keymap to a Latin one, then install
> > KeymapSwitcher optional package, then add the Russian keymap back.
>
> This one is rather easy : make KeymapSwitcher part of the install (as an
> optional package), have installer check for the keymap, and if it is
> non-latin, install and enable it.
> No questions asked to the user for things that just make sense, same way
> as we should install an input method for japanese in the default
> install, switch to the proper fonts, and so on.
>
Yes, that sounds like a good solution that I was already hinting at. But,
we need to determine which keymaps are non-latin somehow. The simplest
solution is to just hardcode a list, fancier methods are also possible if
necessary.
> But, this should not result in more questions asked to the user. From
> the language + keymap choice, we should be able to guess sane defaults,
> and people not happy with it (left-handed mouse users for example) will
> have to go in the preference apps. We just need to make sure they can
> reach said apps after installation.
>
> >
> > And I figured as long as we are solving that problem we could set a few
> > other things like setting a left-handed mouse, time zone, etc. in the
> same
> > dialog.
>
> We could open all of the preference panels, or have a huge setup wizard
> like mac os 9. I don't think it is of any help. There are two targets,
> let's see how they react :
> * Experienced computer user : wants to use the OS, will figure out his
> way to the preferences easily enough. Does not need the wizard.
> * Beginner user : will get puzzled by getting asked questions he have
> no ideas about. We can expect them to select a language and keymap right
> (most of the time...).
>
> As I said, putting everything in the same dialog means we will be
> replicating the work done in the preference apps. We made the choice of
> making them separate small apps and not a single big one. So it seems to
> make sense to not build a big one on top of it just for first boot. It
> is, in one way, making the same information available in different
> views, from different places. This is only source of user confusion.
Well, for experienced users it would be a minor annoyance, for beginners it
might be helpful, more helpful than why is my clock wrong and how do I fix
it?, how do I change my mouse to left-handed?, why is my keyboard wrong?
Why doesn't control+C copy? What is wrong with this OS? I am going back to
Windows.
Although, perhaps it is isn't needed since the preferences are easy to
find, which is fine. Let's just drop the idea, my original point was, there
are a bunch of things that legitimately need to be fixed now, and let's
concentrate on fixing those things, more than just me, because I can't do
it all alone.
John Scipione
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