Duffy: Anaconda Language & Keyboard Layout Selection

On her blog, Máirín Duffy looks into the confusion of choosing a language and keyboard layout in the Anaconda installer used by Fedora. In the posting, she mocks up various ways that the selection screens could be improved to make it easier for non-English users to find their language and keyboard. It is Anaconda-specific, but describes problems that plague many language/keyboard choosing programs. "While Anaconda's manually-maintained lang table ties together some useful information across the languages (a default locale, keyboard layout, etc.), at least for keyboard layout selection, it could be a bit smarter providing not only a sane default, but also 'adjacent' alternatives that are more likely than most of the others. These are long lists where only a fraction of the data in the list is relevant to the user. If I choose English as my installation language, and I'm (for example) in the U.K., there’s an annoying amount of difference between the two keyboards, yet as you can see in the screenshots above, the Ukranian layout is between the default and the (likely) more relevant U.K. layout. That the U.K. layout is near the U.S. one is sadly a coincidence based on the first few letters of each country’s name (thankfully we’re both united!)"

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