No keyboard indicator applet shown after install with Greek kb

so the bug is that the indicator applet is not there by default? it has never been there.

The indicator applet should be added to the panel automatically after installation, ONLY if the user has selected during installation a different keyboard layout. So the applet shouldn't be there by default for all installs. Other operating systems, such as Windows do this, and users migrating from there expect this behavior. From my experiences with new Ubuntu users, they are having difficulty adding the applet them selfs, because it's not well advertised that you can add additional applets in the panel. It's kind of a hidden feature. Also the keyboard configuration app, doesn't provide a way to add the applet or mention of its availability.

You are right Pedro that it has never been there, so consider this bug a wishlist item. Tell me if you need additional details.

Thanks

Adding the applet may be an easy thing to do in single user systems,
but it isn't easy when you have hundreds of students in primary or even secondary schools.

Please add the applet automatically when more than one keyboard layouts are active.

It's definitely a bug and should be corrected asap or for 10.04. The bug is that although I select Greek language and Greek Extended keyboard layout and although it downloads and installs some language support files during installation, after the installation there is only one keyboard layout available, namely English US for me. I had to add the Greek Extended layout manually myself. The keyboard indicator applet never showed up before and I always had to add it to the bar myself manually, so I am not sure how it is supposed to behave in 9.10.

And what Alkis Goergopoulos said; he has my full support.

I support greek ubuntu newcomers in a regular base. It is really frustration for greek (and I suppose other non-latin users) to have to manually add the keyboard indicator applet in order to easily access layout options and be able to know what the current layout is. It would be a significant step towards fixing bug #1 to have keyboard indicator added automatically to panel from the installation script when greek (or another non-latin layout) language is selected during installation.

These are three bug reports.

1. The keyboard indicator applet should be configured to be activated through installation, when the installer is about to setup more than one keyboard layouts.

2. This is also an upstream issue, and we should link to a bug report in bugzilla.gnome.org, under Product: gnome-applets, Component: keyboard indicator Either an existing report on this issue, or a new bug report.
The rational here is that we want any action that adds a second (or more) keyboard layouts, should trigger the keyboard indicator to show up on the task bar.

3. When you install Ubuntu 9.10 with Greek support, the default layouts are "us,gr" and "gr". This is messy and should be fixed. The user iterates between "us, gr, gr" when switching layouts, which obviously is messy.

NB: When you install Linux with Greek keyboard layouts, you select the "Greek" layout instead of "Greek Extended". We do not use "Greek Extended" anymore. "Greek" is now a superset of "Greek Extended". Thus, when you install Ubuntu Linux, you do not change the default during the Keyboard layout step.
We tell everyone to make installations with the "Greek" keyboard layout.
For more, see http://simos.info/blog/archives/888

Καλημέρα και Χρόνια Πολλά σε όλους,

γνωρίζει κανείς τι ακριβώς παίζει με αυτή την ανακοίνωση ότι πρόκειται να
αντικατασταθεί το keyboard indicator applet:
http://blogs.gnome.org/sudaltsov/;

Επίσης, έκανα συνδρομή της ελληνικής loco στα bug
460328<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/460328>και
401497<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/401497>,
που αφορούν το θέμα 3. που αναφέρει ο Σίμος παρακάτω. (Αν κάποιος πιστεύει
ότι ένα από τα δύο πρέπει να σημειωθεί ως duplicate, ας το κάνει.)
Και μία γενική παρατήρηση. Τα bug που αφορούν την Ελληνική διάταξη συνήθως
αφορούν και όλες τις άλλες γλώσσες που χρησιμοποιούν αλφάβητο, αλλά όχι το
λατινικό αλφάβητο. Π.χ. Ρώσικα, Σέρβικα, Εβραϊκά. Μήπως λοιπόν στα bug που
αναφέρουμε θα έπρεπε να μιλάμε για non-latin keyboard layouts και να βάζουμε
το Greek στα tags; Γιατί, όπως και να το κάνουμε, υπάρχουν πολλοί
περισσότεροι Ρώσοι χρήστες από ότι Έλληνες.

Τζένη

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 2:00 AM, Simos Xenitellis <email address hidden>wrote:

> These are three bug reports.
>
> 1. The keyboard indicator applet should be configured to be activated
> through installation, when the installer is about to setup more than one
> keyboard layouts.
>
> 2. This is also an upstream issue, and we should link to a bug report in
> bugzilla.gnome.org, under Product: gnome-applets, Component: keyboard
> indicator Either an existing report on this issue, or a new bug report.
> The rational here is that we want any action that adds a second (or more)
> keyboard layouts, should trigger the keyboard indicator to show up on the
> task bar.
>
> 3. When you install Ubuntu 9.10 with Greek support, the default layouts
> are "us,gr" and "gr". This is messy and should be fixed. The user
> iterates between "us, gr, gr" when switching layouts, which obviously is
> messy.
>
> NB: When you install Linux with Greek keyboard layouts, you select the
> "Greek" layout instead of "Greek Extended". We do not use "Greek Extended"
> anymore. "Greek" is now a superset of "Greek Extended". Thus, when you
> install Ubuntu Linux, you do not change the default during the Keyboard
> layout step.
> We tell everyone to make installations with the "Greek" keyboard layout.
> For more, see http://simos.info/blog/archives/888
>
> --
> No keyboard indicator applet shown after install with Greek kb
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/498839
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> Greek LoCo Team, which is a direct subscriber.
>
> --
> Ubuntu-gr mailing list
> <email address hidden>
>
> If you do not want to receive any more messages from the ubuntu-gr mailing
> list, please follow this link and choose unsubscribe:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-gr
>

Based on #8, I reply to #7:

According to http://blogs.gnome.org/sudaltsov/2009/12/27/gnome-keyboard-applet-as-good-as-gone/ the bug reports 1 and 2 are now invalidated, which means that in the new GNOME, the new keyboard indicator will be present automatically when the user has selected more than one layouts. It solves problems.

What is left is to check again with a 10.04 alpha/beta
a. the default keyboard layout settings when someone installs Ubuntu with Greek locale
(run gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd and report back the result)
b. identify the package that configures the layout during installation. I keep asking to be reminded of this. Can I haz a link to the configuration file that shows the default keyboard layout installation settings for Greek?
c. if someone installs Ubuntu with default locale (English), what are the steps to add the Greek layout. We want to establish that, in usability terms, the user is more likely to get it right than not.

This keyboard applet has been removed completely in Lucid, and replaced with a status indicator shipped with gnome-settings-daemon instead. Because it is no longer a panel applet, it has the ability to show/hide automatically (and I believe it already does that). This will be uploaded to Lucid tomorrow.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-settings-daemon - 2.29.5-0ubuntu1

---------------
gnome-settings-daemon (2.29.5-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New upstream version (LP: #508216)
    - Fix variant handling in $GDM_KEYBOARD_LAYOUT (Martin Pitt) (#596897)
    - Tighten check for XInput (Jens Granseuer)
    - Fix bluriness in level bar, and popup (Bastien Nocera) (#567249)
    - Remove unused variable (Bastien Nocera) (#599904)
    - Honour libexecdir when spawning gsd-locate-pointer (Jens Granseuer)
      (#599209)
    - Allow left-handed setting for touchpads (Peter Hutterer) (LP: #479968)
    - Use a rounded instead of curved rectangle (William Jon McCann)
    - Improve the media keys overlay design (William Jon McCann) (#596136)
    - Add brightness to the media-keys popup (Bastien Nocera) (#599677)
    - Fix for GSEAL goal (Bastien Nocera) (#599861)
    - Avoid volumes going over 100% (Bastien Nocera) (#600770)
    - Make OSD display more generic (Bastien Nocera) (#600951)
    - Support loading -rtl and -ltr variants of icons (Bastien Nocera)
      (#600984)
    - Relicense gsd-media-keys-window.[ch] to LGPL (Bastien Nocera) (#600986)
    - Hide the status icon before unreffing it (Matthias Clasen) (#601696)
    - Make eject behave better on OpenBSD (Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse)
      (#598573)
    - Export libexecdir in .pc file (DJ Lucas) (#596388)
    - Run gnome-color-manager apply program when the outputs change
      (Richard Hughes)
    - Factor out function to get keycodes from keysym names (Federico Mena
      Quintero)
    - Handle the XF86RotateWindows hotkey by rotating a laptop's display
      (Federico Mena Quintero)
    - Respond to monitor configuration changes when in charge (Matthias
      Clasen) (#601203)
    - Filter invalid layouts before looking for the index of one passed by
      gdm (Vincent Untz) (#585868)
    - Add linsysfs to list of virtual filesystems (Coleman Kane) (#604396)
    - Remove sleep keybindings (Bastien Nocera) (LP: #490704, GNOME: #170175)
    - Start an on-screen-display window (OSD) (Federico Mena Quintero)
    - Split the composited and non-composited code for the expose-event
      handler (Federico Mena Quintero)
    - Use a hand-drawn frame instead of a GtkBuilder frame (Federico Mena
      Quintero)
    - Using GkbdStatus for the automatic notification icon (Sergey V.
      Udaltsov) (LP: #498839)
    - Implement popup menu for the notification icon (Sergey V. Udaltsov)
    - Add extra API required by GsdMediaKeysWindow (Federico Mena Quintero)
    - Add timed exit option (William Jon McCann)
    - Fixes for new libxklavier (Sergey V. Udaltsov)
  * debian/control:
    - Bump libxklavier-dev build-dep to >= 5.0
    - Bump libgnomekbd-dev build-dep to >= 2.29.5
  * Refreshed patches:
    - 02_fix_randr.patch
    - 02_missing_libs.patch
    - 30_pkgconfig-path.patch
    - 70_migrate_touchpad_config.patch
    - 90_autoreconf.patch
  * Dropped patches merged upstream:
    - 03_gdm_keyboard_variant_handling.patch
    - 91_gsd_locate_pointer_path_fix.patch
  * Re-written 16_use_synchronous_notifications.patch - the patch now has
    the more generic parts split in to plugins/common, as th...