Anaconda/UX Redesign/

Resources

• Original mailing list thread

Issues

Today I was looking at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=624158; part of that bug involved creating a locale mapping file in initscripts; this seemed like a bad idea. When considering that, I thought of lang-table, and wondered 'how could we get rid of that'.

Summary of Issues

• multiple locale/location screens
• no auto-detection
• anaconda-specific locale mapping files - we really shouldn't be driving off of configuration sources that only live in anaconda.

We can do better.

Multiple Locale / Location Screens

Anaconda currently has multiple locale/location screens:

• language selection (custom anaconda)
• keyboard selection (from s-c-keyboard, but nothing else uses that)
• timezone selection (from s-c-date)
• clock setting / ntp (in firstboot)

Needed Localization Info

Anaconda needs the following bits of localization info:

• locale/language
• timezone
• keyboard layout
• text font

Data Sources

What Anaconda currently uses

Anaconda uses the following data sources:

• tzdata
• lang-table (a custom anaconda file)

Anaconda does *zero* autodetection.

Available Resources

Other data sources

Currently, we have the following data sources available to us:

• iso-codes
• localedata
• tzdata
• libgweather
• geoclue
• xkeyboard-config

iso-codes

Includes:

• country subdivisions (state/province), indexed by country
• countries, and their country code
• languages

Does not map:

• languages to countries

localedata

Maps:

• languages to countries (more or less)

Does not map:

• languages to a primary locale/country

tzdata

Includes:

• timezones, indexed by country
• latitude/longitude for timezones

Does not map:

• locales to country
• random cities to timezones (only specific timezone cities)

libgweather

Includes:

• many many cities, organized by country
  • with timezone
  • with lat/lon
  • with weather codes

Does not map:

• cities/countries to locale

geoclue

Maps:

• current location to:
  • country
  • city
  • latitude/longitude

xkeyboard-config

Maps:

• language name to xkb layout (1:n, though)
• country name to xkb layout

Widgetry

Split-Out Widgetry

• system-config-date - timezone selector
  • Uses: tzdata
• system-config-date - timezone selector
  • Uses: custom hardcoded mappings in the code, lang-table
• system-config-language - language selector
  • Uses: iso-codes
• anaconda language selector - language selector
  • Uses: lang-table

Codebases that don't have widgetry split out

• gdm - language and keyboard selectors
  • Uses: iso-codes, xkeyboard-config
• gnome-control-center datetime - timezone selecor
  • Uses: tzdata
  • http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/DateAndTime
• gnome-panel - location selector
  • Uses: libgweather, tzdata

Widgetry currently in development

• gnome locale configuration applet
  • Uses: iso-codes, xkeyboard-config, and more
  • http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/RegionAndLanguage

Proposal #1

On boot, as soon as there is networking available, start geoclue. Acquire location information. Then, feed the information as so:

• country, latitude/longitude (from geoclue)
  • timezone (from country, lat/lon, via tzdata)
  • language (via ???????, see below)
    • keyboard layout (from country/language combo, via xkeyboard-config)
    • text font (hardcoded!)

Notes:

• What if we don't have network? Do DHCP always on link!
• It's easy to get a list of possible languages given the country. There's no canonical data source of what to use for the *primary* language, though. We could make a mapping table (ugh), or do heuristics (double ugh).
  • text font is hardcoded to 'latarcyrheb-sun16'. We could conceivable have an override for the very few people who can't use that.

We then display as so:

Current settings:
Location: United States         [ change ] [ details ]

If you click 'change', it pops up a selector dialog that either:

• allows you to enter a location (similar to the gnome panel clock code)
• allows you to click a location (similar to the control center timezone selector)

Either of those resets country, timezone, language, keyboard layout, etc. If you select 'details', (or '>>>', or some expander, to be language-neutral), you get:

Language: English               [ change ]
Country: USA                    [ change ]
Time: 2:33 PM (US Eastern)      [ change ]
Keyboard Layout: us             [ change ]

Then, each of those options pops up a single-purpose configuration dialog. anaconda can either use the gnome capplet once it's done, or roll its own.