Bug#1027003: gnome-control-center: Pls consider keyboard patches from upstream MR

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Package: src:gnome-control-center
Version: 1:43.1-2
X-Debian-CC: gunnarhj at debian.org

Hello!

This upstream MR:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/merge_requests/910

improves the Special Character Entry section in Settings -> Keyboard. 
Ubuntu applies patches with the three commits in that MR. The patches 
would apply in Debian, and I would like to find out the interest in 
adding them to debian/master as a preparation for Debian 12.

First and foremost there is this very small patch:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-Allow-disabling-alternate-characters-key.patch

Currently, by just opening the "Alternate Characters Key" window (maybe 
out of curiosity), you add lv3:ralt_switch to xkb-options. If you have a 
European keyboard layout, that particular value is probably set via the 
layout anyway, and in that case you may not even notice. But if you have 
for instance the "English (US)" or "Russian" layout, you may find that 
your Right Alt key no longer works as expected. And on top of that: The 
UI offers no way to change it back. The issue is similar to this 
upstream one:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/918

keyboard-Allow-disabling-alternate-characters-key.patch adds a switch to 
enable/disable the thing, and personally I think we should apply that 
patch in debian/master.

Then we have two more patches:

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-For-xkb-options-have-Layout-default-toggle-and-N.patch

https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-control-center/-/blob/ubuntu/master/debian/patches/keyboard-Avoid-modifying-xkb-options-when-user-changes-n.patch

In short they make the "Alternate Characters Key" control smarter. A 
"None" option is added, and if you pick some other key but "Right Alt" 
to serve as the "Alternate Characters Key", "Right Alt" is automatically 
turned into a regular "Alt" key.

A problem is that one of the two latter patches adds some translatable 
strings: "Layout default", "Use layout default" and "None". So if we 
would choose to improve the functionality using those patches, we would 
end up with some strings shown untranslated in the UI for now, since the 
upstream MR !910 has not been merged yet.

It would of course be best if some GNOME dev could merge !910, so the 
new strings are passed to the GNOME translators. I don't know how to 
make that happen, though. Issue #918 was submitted almost 3 years ago.

Let me know what you think.

-- 
Cheers,
Gunnar Hjalmarsson