[Bug 1892014] Re: 18.04.14.7 regression: no alt_shift_toggle in XKBOPTIONS

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

On 2020-08-18 15:35, Alkis Georgopoulos wrote:
>> Why is there a need to switch keyboard layout during the
>> installation?
> 
> One example is to set the user name, e.g. Διαχειριστής
> (Administrator).

That makes me think of bug #1875062.

> Another is to be able to surf etc while ubiquity is running in the
> background.

Ok..

>> As regards post-install, i.e. at first boot/login, the desktop
>> environment ought to provide some default shortcut for switching
>> input sources.
> 
> By with package? Xorg by itself supports Alt+Shift, and this worked
> fine up to 18.04.1, while it broke in 18.04.2, is "plain xkb" now
> unsupported?

No, XKB is not unsupported.

This topic is a can of worms. If you read the story at bug #1762952,
you'll see that the previous behavior, where console-setup aggressively
set Alt+Shift in /etc/default/keyboard for all users, caused confusion
and issues for users with the GNOME desktop. My proposal, to stop it
from doing so only at package upgrades, was first accepted but then
reversed due to some ubiquity regression.

Adam Conrad's conclusion was to completely stop console-setup from
automatically setting Alt+Shift.

I can't tell which solution would be best to fit all the desktop
environments.

> By default, MATE doesn't ship ibus or fcitx, isn't that OK? I haven't
> tested in other flavors yet..

I can't imagine that IBus or Fcitx would be needed to handle this. If
MATE depends on XKB for input source switching, there must be other ways
to do it besides letting console-setup set Alt+Shift by default for all
users.

On Ubuntu there is a dconf setting:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options

Probably there is some equivalent dconf key on MATE.

> `setxkbmap -query` shows the wrong settings now; if one runs `dpkg-
> reconfigure keyboard-configuration` after installation, then it
> works fine again.

How do you define "right" and "wrong" in this context?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1892014

Title:
  18.04.14.7 regression: no alt_shift_toggle in XKBOPTIONS

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Up to ubuntu-mate-18.04.1.iso, everything was fine. Starting with
  18.04.2, XKB_OPTIONS does not contain "alt_shift_toggle" anymore and
  we cannot switch the keyboard layout to e.g. Greek using Alt+Shift.

  Reading the changelog, I see:

  $ ~/source/ubiquity$ git show 786a5325ef
  +console-setup (1.178ubuntu6) cosmic; urgency=medium
  +
  +  * keyboard-configuration.{config,templates}: There is no good default for
  +    layout toggling, stop pretending there is.  Console users can set one
  +    with dpkg-reconfigure or editing /etc/defaults/keyboard (LP: #1762952)

  I'm guessing that ubiquity duplicates some code from console-setup,
  and LP: #1762952 caused this regression.

  To reproduce:
  1) Start ubuntu-mate-18.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
  2) Select Ελληνικά (Greek) and start installing Ubuntu using the default options
  3) Right after the keyboard layout step, run:
  $ grep XKBOPTIONS /etc/default/keyboard 
  XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
  4) Verify that you can switch to Greek with Alt+Shift

  Starting from ubuntu-mate-18.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso (.1=OK, .2=BAD), we cannot switch to Greek using Alt+Shift anymore:
  $ grep XKBOPTIONS /etc/default/keyboard 
  XKBOPTIONS="grp_led:scroll"

  Does ubiquity really expect the users to run `dpkg-reconfigure
  console-setup`?

  Note that selecting Greek in the syslinux menu produces the correct
  XKBOPTIONS, yet ubiquity overwrites them later on with the wrong ones.

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