Bug#399980: libxklavier -slovak keyboard in qwerty variant dosen't work and has very strange effects

[Mgr. Peter Tuharsky]

Package: libxklavier10
Version: 2.2-4

This bug is in fact the "consolidation" of bugs 399974, 399973, 397915.
These bugs are all connected together. It comes, that they are just
separate symptoms of single bug. So I'm trying to sumarise all that we know.

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Approach I

I configure the xorg.conf to allow keyboard switching this way:

Option  "XkbVariant"    "qwerty"
Option  "XkbLayout"     "us,sk"
Option  "XkbOptions"    grp:shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"

In this configuration, everything works fine, excepting the fact, that
the keyboard variant is NOT respected; the sk keyboard is always in
qwertz variant. Annoying, because I must often swith between the us and sk.


-----------
Approach II

Now I change the order, because I want the sk to be the default:
Option  "XkbLayout"     "sk,us"

The consequences are the same, however the pipe symbol stops working for
english keyboard. It places the same symbol as the sk does: the )
This is annoying even more, because now the graphical console is almost
useless; You can imagine, that the pipe is quite important for command line.


------------
Approach III

Now, I really need the qwerty, so I change configuration. I abandon and
comment out the line #Option  "XkbVariant"    "qwerty"
because as shown before, it does nothing for me in fact. It does nothing
even if left active, so we can "safely" just let it be.

I'll try to go the "hard" way, and put exact keyboard in there, as I 
(succesfully) did with Woody and Sarge:

Option  "XkbLayout"     "us,sk_qwerty"

Or (dosen't make difference) to:
Option  "XkbLayout"     "sk_qwerty,us"

It dosen't matter, which keyboard appears as the first. Since now, the
keyboard is ALWAYS in US, the attempts to switch so SK do absolutely 
nothing.

Besides that, switching to console (Ctrl-Alt-Fx) dosen't work anymore.
So all I get is crippled english keyboard -no switch to slovak, no
switch to text console.


-----------
Approach IV

There is one partial solution, that however applies only to GNOME. If I
let only the us keyboard in xorg.conf, and configure switching to the 
national keyboard using the GNOME applet, it works fine.
However, the other window managers (say, IceWM) are useless this way. 
I'm also not sure, how will this all act on thin client environment, 
that already has serious problems with national keyboard.



If You wish, we could close the previous bugs. Then, however, please try 
to shake the bug out. I have spend really much time trying to get the 
facts together ;-)


Sincerely
Peter