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

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

If you really read the comments at bug #1762952, you see that the
initially proposed change was limited in scope. However, it proved to
come with various regressions, so it landed in a solution where the
default shortcut for switching keyboard layout was changed in console-
setup from "Alt+Shift" to "No toggling".

But it did address incompatibility issues on Ubuntu/GNOME, so reverting
it to the old behavior would be bad.

Possibly console-setup could be modified again, so the default shortcut
depends on XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP ("No toggling" for GNOME and "Alt+Shift"
for others). That way there wouldn't be a need to involve ubiquity or
other desktops.

@Adam: Do you think that would make sense?

On 2020-08-20 11:10, Alkis Georgopoulos wrote:
> I just tested on Ubuntu GNOME and I can't switch the layout with
> Alt+Shift.

Right. Super+Space is default on GNOME.

> I can switch it with Win+Space, which isn't appropriate for
> Greece.

That's reasonably about personal preferences rather than geographical.
Many users are used to something else but Super+Space, and on GNOME they
can either change it to something else or add some XKB based shortcut
via Tweaks.

> Also, I can't type Greek in neither the console nor in GDM.

Super+Space works for me in GDM. A prerequisite is that
/etc/default/keyboard includes more than one XKB layouts.

As regards the console, is there a use case which would be worth to take
into consideration where there is a need to switch to a non-latin
keyboard layout?

** Also affects: console-setup (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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

Title:
  18.04.14.7 regression: no alt_shift_toggle in XKBOPTIONS

Status in console-setup package in Ubuntu:
  New
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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