[Pkg-kbd-devel] Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch

[Denis Barbier]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 12:28:00PM +0300, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> > - a true system locale that doesn't depend on the /etc/environment
> >   config file, in order to support localized boot processes
> 
> This means that the setfont and console-chars utilities have also to
> be moved from /usr/bin to /bin.

Not necessarily, "localized boot processes" is achieved after /usr
is mounted.  Maybe we will try to drop English sooner, but at this
stage this looks quite ambitious.

IMO we have to take 3 scenarios into account:
 1. User has to type something before /usr is mounted
 2. User needs to enter non-ASCII letters to log in (/usr is mounted)
 3. Multiple users on console with different settings

For 1, locales are not available, so there is no need to have the
right font, only ASCII is supported.  But user may have to enter
non-ASCII letters, eg. to enter a password, so keyboard needs to
be setup correctly.  This is why /etc/console/boottime.kmap.gz
exist.  This scenario is for rescue modes, users need to log in
but cannot expect to display everything other than ASCII.  (Ideally
locale would be set to C at this point)

But IIRC this file is currently screwed up for non-UTF-8
non-latin-1 charsets: symbols are transcoded into latin1 so that
the right 8bit value is read by loadkeys.
A simple solution is to always set kernel into UTF-8 mode, and
fix symbols in boottime.kmap.gz (maybe by renaming it into
boottime.umap.gz to make sure that the right symbols are loaded?).

2 is quite similar, user may have to enter non-ASCII letters to log in.
In short, 2 is about console login screen.
IIRC other distros read settings from /etc/sysconfig/i18n (or /etc/i18n,
I do not remember): keyboard layout, console font and whether kernel
needs to be set into UTF-8 mode.  Loadkeys and setfont should then work
flawlessly (if /usr is mounted).
Having all these i18n related settings gathered into a single place is
a good idea.

I do not know whether other distros handle 3, but it would be really
convenient if the same settings were also read from $HOME/.i18n when
user logs in.

To summarize:
  a. loadkeys reads boottime.kmap.gz early for rescue mode.
  b. read settings from /etc/i18n after /usr is mounted and call
     loadkeys+setfont if settings are defined.
  c. read settings from /etc/i18n and $HOME/.i18n when user logs
     in and call loadkeys+setfont if settings are redefined.

Comments?

Denis