the Northern Saami layout does not implement what it claims to implement
While trimming the Norwegian layouts, I noticed there is a smi_nodeadkeys
besides an smi
layout, but... the latter does not contain any dead keys. :/ Also, the only change smi_nodeadkeys
makes is to replace asciitilde
on AE12
with ogonek
. But what use is a plain ogonek
? What would be useful is a dead_ogonek
. Something is wrong here.
The URL given in the smi
layout is dead, but there is the Wayback machine, with for example this capture.
Notice the thick black borders around the upper levels of AE12
and AD12
. These make one think that they are meant to be dead keys. And indeed, near the bottom of the page it says:
The following characters are produced with the dead keys E12, D12:
C1 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
C9 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
...
F4 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX
FB LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH CIRCUMFLEX
This is clear as glass. The smi
layout mistakenly put plain accent characters where dead keys were intended.
But that is just a part of the problems. See that the picture puts the trademark sign on the third level of the TLDE
key, but the actual smi
layout has the broken-bar sign there. The latter is a useless symbol and the first is a duplication with the fourth level of AD04
. Further see that both picture and smi
layout have œ
and Œ
on the third and fourth level of AD09
, but according to Wikipedia none of the Sámis use an œ
in their writing -- what one Sámi does use is õ
, but this character is not included in the smi
layout. :/
In short: the smi
layout is poorly made, lacks dead keys, lacks a few symbols, and has duplications. Additionally: it doesn't match the Sami layout as found on Windows. Compare this with what is currently in xkeyboard-config.
There are so many differences that, if anyone actually uses the smi
layout, it would be cruel to change it. One would have to make a new smi
layout that matches the Windows one closely, and keep the current layout as smi-legacy
maybe? But that would be painful clutter and would burden the user with a choice they shouldn't need to make.