So, due to the complaints in: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477197 The changes asked in this bug were reverted. So, I'm reopening this bug, because I consider it is still a bug not to have a dead_tilde.
I was never aware that there was a "poll" going on, and if I had been aware, I'm sure that plenty of people from Latin America would have reacted and expressed their opinion. It looks like most people their are from Spain and not Latin America. This is the text that I already submitted to the freedesktop bug: --- --- --- I'm sorry that I didn't react earlier, I had no warning that this bug, or it's sister bug http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9763 had been subjected to a poll and were being reverted. I think that it's a serious mistake to have no dead tildes in a Spanish language keyboard. In the latinamerican keyboards we now have 3 asciitilde and NO dead_tilde. While in the Spanish keyboard (the one in bug 9763), there are 2 asciitilde and NO dead_tilde. Even if Spanish itself does not include ã or õ, Portuguese does. And we live in an integrated world. Specially in Latin America, where the biggest country of the region is Brazil, which speaks Portuguese, not Spanish. It's very important for all of us to be able to write the characters of our neighbour countries. Take for example the case of the argentinian NIC service which from now on will allow domains with special characters: http://www.nic.ar/616, it not only allows the special characters for Spanish, but also the ones for Portuguese. The current keyboard has a dead ` and a dead ^, which are characters only used in French, yet nobody complains that these should be made non-dead. So, why do we allow for compatibility with French and not with Portuguese? Most people complained about this because of habit more than because of real causes. Yet sometimes changes have to be made that mean that people have to get used to them, and eventually they'll be glad that the change was made. I think that the most sensible place for the dead tilde is near all the other dead keys (<AD12>), but if people so vehemently opose to that, then leave the dead tilde in the <AE04> or <AC10> key. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE allow us to have at least one dead_tilde. Also, I don't think this should be "polled" but rather a standard should be used. But, if you have to take it to a poll, please warn everybody that is affected. All the people in Latin America, specially those in countries that are part of Mercosur eventually need some Portuguese characters, however it looks like most people that expressed their opinions were from Spain, not from Latin America. --- --- --- I find phrases like "There is no character in the Spanish language that would need it as a dead key" to be extremely narrow-minded. If we were to be fair, then all the dead keys except ' and " would go away, because à â ā å are not part of the Spanish language, yet we allow them to allow people to write in the languages of neighbour countries. For me, and I suspect that for most of all the other people in Latin America, it's much more essential to have a dead_tilde than all the others weird dead keys. Please, please, please, include at least one dead_tilde. Even if it would mean not going with the standard, I would settle for <AC10> (ñ) in both keyboards (Spanish and Latin American), but we definitely need one. -- Besos, Marga