Re: Flags or not? (Was: Re: Noticed in passing)

["Christian Rose" <menthos gnome org>]

On 7/10/06, Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
[...]
> How do we change from country codes to language codes? That is actually
> a bit tough. The layout codes come transparently from upstream, Xorg
> (xkeyboard-config). This would add some extra work to Sergey and would
> rekindle the discussion in the XKB list on whether to use country codes
> or language codes. For this to work, there should be a layer (=list)
> that translates keyboard layout codes to language codes.

For the backend, it makes most sense to use country codes, or perhaps
a combination of country code and language code. Most of the standard
layouts are *national* layouts that originate from back when people
used typewriters, and there was not much of cross-country
standardization going on. For example, the Swiss French layout is
different from the layout used in France, and then again, that one is
probably different from the layout that French speaking people in
Canada use.

However, that is of course a seperate issue from what should be
displayed in the UI. In that case, I think a display of language code
meets most user expectations, and this is also in fact what Windows
does in this case.


Christian