Re: No Flags "Policy"

["Sergey V. Oudaltsov" <sergey oudaltsov clients ie>]

I feel like I have to say something. Actually, it was me who raised all
this stream of bad questions etc.

The story is: there is a keyboard layout indicator, part of gswitchit
xkb toolkit, which is kind of merging into GNOME. GNOME ALREADY has some
set of flags in gkb. And all I wanted is to have some single unified set
of flags.

Why flags are good (from usability POV). For me and many other people it
is much easier to distinguish colors rather than read
"США"/"Рус" written in small letters in the corner of the screen. Side
vision really benefits from using flags. That is why many users of
gswitchit use flags but not labels (though I have to admit many do use
labels - we are about freedom of choice after all, aren't we?). Yes, I
can remove this function from gswitchit (and move it to gswitchit-
plugins which probably never be included in the official gnome distros).
I just see 2 drawbacks: possible feature regression (from gswitchit
users POV) - and really lost piece of usability. 

So, when I raised the question - I just wanted to "normalize" the flags
in GNOME. And I did not want them do disappear. I am really sorry the
situation turned another way:(

I think I understand all the political consequences. But if GNOME DOES
have a set of flags - distro makers can always remove "bad" flags (for
example, if they create RedHat Chinese Edition or something). We give
freedom to remove - which has more value than freedom to add (the
difference if at least the value of the flags themselves). And I think
using the names accepted by ISO would be the "good enough" solution.

BTW, about political charge. Even if we remove flags - there are layout
names. They are somewhat charged as well.  For example, British layout
can be identified as GB or UK. And so on and so forth. Does this mean we
should use only full names? Or just abstract images (flowers, bees,
birds)? 

-- 
Sergey