During Leap 156 installation I selected (correctly) German language for the keyboard, and English as the system language. However, Yast assumes the keyboard is English. (e.g. ‘z’ and ‘y’ are exchanged). Yast seems to be the only application doing this.
What should I do to correct this?
You don’t say which DE you are using but in KDE System settings>Input devices allows you to change the keyboard layout you are using. I assume Gnome has an equivalent.
The solution is, apparently, to select the ‘German (with deadkeys)’ option under Yast System Keyboard Layout. I had chosen ‘German’.
I wonder if this might lead to problems with the LOBase representation of SQL which uses the ´ and characters as apostrophies to designate field names. When is a 'dead key' not a 'dead key'? Here, for example, some are, some aren't!^`
Use YaST to set the system keyboard to DE
It seems that the solution is to use YaST System Keyboard Layout to ‘Accept’ the desired keyboard layout, because that didn’t go to conclusion during the Leap156 installation process
No you did not. You selected probably that the keyboard has a German layout. Not the language. A keyboard is language agnostic.
This may look pedantic, but I see often these misunderstandings and people then trying to get the system to understand the keyboard layout by tinkering with LANG and other locale variables. But all these are to influence output only (choosing a language for printing (error-)messages, formatting date/time, formatting numbers (1,234,567.89 vs. 1.234.567,89 vs. 1’234’567,89, etc.). They have nothing to do with the keyboard layout (and can perfectly function without any keyboard attached to the system).
I was referring to the two settings that are requested together during the installation process: 1) System language, 2) Keyboard (Sorry, I can’t remember the exact wording)
My answers were 1) English (UK) and 2) German.
Options for 2) were, if I remember correctly, German, German (Swiss) and German (dead keys)
In spite of my answer to 2) above, when the installation process ended, YaST (only YaST) used an English keyboard layout, (all?) other applications respected the German keyboard layout.
What is your original keyboard layout?
I have the same problem, but I selected
while my hardware keyboard has a US layout.
Now I am having some applications using the German layout (system settings and Terminal) and others using the US layout by default.
@hcvv Suggested me to change the keyboard yast-settings, to the original layout of your hardware. (Wrong keyboard layout on most applications after fresh install - #10 by hcvv)
I am still facing the problem, that if I do that, and change the layout later in the KDE options, the same applications as before do not respect the layout change.
Did you select the Language in KDE??? Language is user specific. You can have different users using different languages on the same machine. Yast set the language to use for system/root not for a given user.
I did, the problem seems pretty intricate and I’ll open a KDE bug report as soon as I have the time to. I’ll let you know if I find any solution, for now I’ll just get used to the US keyboard layout.
In Yast you are telling the system what sort of hardware your keyboard is; in KDE System settings you are telling the system what layout you want that hardware to adopt. I have a GB keyboard which is what is set in Yast. I have English, French and German selected in KDE System settings; so I can treat the keyboard, which in hardware is QUERTY, as a software QUERTY, AZERTY or QUERTZ keyboard.
Once I change the software keyboard, I have never had any problem with the correct characters for each software keyboard appearing in a program.
This sort of option is not new; I had it in CP/M in the 1980s except that I had to reboot the computer to change the software keyboard; in KDE I simply click an icon in the System tray to make the change.
That’s what I did too. The problem is, some apps are not using the language I added in my KDE system settings and are still using the original keyboard language.
The problem with YaST, specifically, is that YaST assumes QWERTY after every boot-up, even if I change it to German (QWERTZ) using the YaST Keyboard Layout function and even if I only have a German keyboard in the Gnome settings…
FWIW in Tumbleweed it works OK, setting German layout in YaST makes the system to use German layout (e.g. at the login screen in GDM) while users in Gnome can use whatever layout they set in Gnome Settings and the apps I tried respect that.
And that survives a reboot, as it should.
Maybe a Leap 15.6 specific issue? Or specific app issue? Or specific config issue?
Tested on 15.6 Gnome (test build, not updated to 15.6 GA yet) and it works OK too.
…to clarify: When I say the keyboard setting in YaST does not survive a reboot, I base that solely on a first visit to YaST after reboot. (e.g. ‘Software Management’ Search, ‘System Keyboard Layout’ Test) . On closing the YaST feature and reopening, the problem has disappeared.
Better go YaST > Hardware > System Keyboard Layout.
The point I am making, is that after every reboot YaST, I get the wrong keyboard for YaST functions on the first visit to YaST. To correct that I must first go the the System Keyboard Layout to reset to the correct keyboard.
Thank you for clarifying, indeed YaST has a weird sense of humour here. Further testing on Tumbleweed reveals the following:
a) on the first invocation, YaST apps (irrelevant which one) use the keyboard layout that is in the first row of the Gnome Keyboard options (even if another one is selected by the current user);
b) on the second invocation, YaST apps use the system keyboard layout;
c) Gnome apps (e.g. Console aka terminal, Text Editor) use whatever layout is currently chosen by the user, that is you can even switch layout without closing the app, so for instance you can type in a German quotation in an English text without closing the editor.
So a workaround might be, for instance:
a) set the system layout to German;
b) “move up” to the first row in Gnome Keyboard settings the “German layout”;
c) if users need a layout other that “German”, place it in the second (or third etc.) row in Gnome Keyboard settings and select it as default for that user.
That way YaST should use the German layout, Login (GDM) should use the German layout, when logged in users should use the layout of their choice.
Hope that helps, but maybe a bug report against YaST should be filed.
EDIT: on next login the user layout defaults to the “first row”, so my previous post should read:
a) on the first invocation, YaST apps use the user layout;
b) on the second and the following invocations, YaST apps use the system layout.
The workaround might still work, but the user layout reverts to that in the first row and the inconvenience may be worse that starting YaST twice when needed.
Sorry for rushing to write without thorough testing.