I think that the last version of the fr-latin9 keymap use the ² a very unefficient way. We have a level 1 access ( symbol that is accessible without shift or alt, *very* precious) and we use it for "ø", a letter only used in Danish, Faroese and Norwegian (Thank you Wikipedia) so that 98% of the french-speaking people will never use it at all. The best option IMHO would be to put œ/Œ back there as it was originally, since this ligature is very common in French. ô would take its place on the O key (this would be coherent with I and U) and ø could be under the P, which is probably an appropriate place. Another option (since Nicolas Mailhot said that a lot of people had requested the change for œ/Œ) would be to put accents/diacritics there since we already have the cedilla and the grave accent on the key and some other diacritics on the keys 1 and 2, which are very close. It would be possible to put ø on the level 3/4 of the ^/¨ key (next to P) and to rearrange the accents. The cute accent or the grave accents for instance may deserve a level 1 position.
Denis, what do you think about it? Actually I would love to hear Nicolas's voice as well...
About Nicolas, he's the one who told me to open a new bug. He said (this is an e-mail he sent to me as an answer to a request about this key, I hope he won't mind): « La touche ² ne sert strictement à rien dans la vraie vie, ce que les discussions sur la proposition ont confirmé (les seuls utilisateurs étant les quakeurs, et encore pas pour le symbole ² mais pour cette touche physique particulière). On ne va pas conditionner une disposition qui se veut pérenne à un jeu actuel, les places sont trop chères pour bloquer une touche avec un symbole inutile en premier niveau. Le déplacement du oe/OE sur o était une demande forte de la part des relecteurs. Si néanmoins suffisamment de personnes me demandent de le remettre en ² comme en latin-9, j'ajouterais sans doute une option qui les permutte. Je t'invite donc à ouvrir et m'assigner un bogue dans le bugzilla xkeyboard-config. Si suffisamment de personnes postent ensuite des commentaires dedans confirmant la demande, j'ajouterais l'option de permutation. » In english: - The "²" key is far too precious to be used for the "²" character (something I (Christophe) agree on) - Many people asked for oe to me moved under O so I did it - If you feel like it's not fine, open a bug on bugzilla and if enough people comment it to ask the same, i will add a variant And that's what I did. By the way I see that he asked me to assign the bug but to him, something I did not so I will correct it right now.
Ok, so far it makes sense. So what we need it more voices supporting the idea of new variant, don't we?;)
> Denis, what do you think about it? Actually I would love to > hear Nicolas's voice as well... Nicolas tried many combinations to find a consistent layout. As long as he is responsive, I will not interfere with his work, he knows better than me what he wants to achieve exactly.
Sergey, please check the bug page, my previous comment was not sent to the XKB mailing list because this bug had been reassigned to Nicolas.
Ok, thank, Denis, I see. So what I think would be the best thing to do is to ask Nicolas whether he finally prefers patching existing variant - or just creating new one with small set of overrides.
Since I've been asked to do a variant for Belgium, and Belgium serigraphy insists even more then the French one on putting useless symbols on this key, I'll fold this change with the others It's a real waste of space though
(BTW this is the only bugzilla I've never received any mail from, and I have a ton of other bugzilla accounts)
Fixed in bug #8853
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