X Developer's Meeting

You should be able to set multimedia keys in Keyboard Shortcuts and in Keyboard, you can choose your proper keyboard. Whats the problem?

So, how do you type the letter 'ü'?

On my Mac, it's "option-u u". On Gnome, I have to pick one of the 3 "German" layouts, and learn to type again. Instead of using something like the "option" key, they move everything around to make room for each letter that has an umlaut (!). And if want to type French, I have to pick one of the several "French" layouts, and learn to type all over again.

In case you lost track:

- Mac: to type German, remember that "option-u" puts an umlaut on the next character; to type French, remember that ç is option-c.

- Gnome: to type German, configure a new keyboard layout (which?), and learn a new layout; to type French, configure yet another new keyboard layout (which?), and learn another new layout.

Also, the German and French layouts seem to be almost-QWERTY. So instead of being able to use my Dvorak layout, as I can on any Mac, I have to use the wrist-killer QWERTY. (Hint: software that causes the user physical pain is bad, mmm'kay?)

But even that isn't universal: the Turkish layouts (I also want to type Turkish from time to time -- and there are no fewer than 4 different Turkish layouts!) seem to be completely unrelated to either QWERTY or Dvorak.

This mess is so completely not worth my time to figure out. If I need to type something in a foreign language, I'll use HTML entities, or use my Mac, or maybe use TeX escapes.

Linux is great for serving Unicode, or displaying it on web pages. It's miserable for typing it in.