Webconverger has great support for worldwide cultures on boot. If you need to switch keyboard layouts, this is possible to configure using the keyboard-layouts= switch. See the Russian example.

Setting up Webconverger for your locale

Specify them on the boot parameter prompt.

The Debian-Live build option is set auto/config like so:

    --bootappend-live ".... locales=en_GB.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=gb"

Sometimes a two letter shorthand for some locales (please test) may work for you.

Tested locales

Swiss German

locales=de_CH.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=ch keyboard-variant=de

Denmark / Danish

locales=da_DK.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=dk

Chinese

locales=zh_CN.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=zh

German

locales=de keyboard-layouts=de

Spanish

locales=es keyboard-layouts=es

French

locales=fr

Italian

locales=it

Japanese

locales=ja_JP.UTF-8

Korean

locales=ko_KR.UTF-8

Finnish

locales=fi keyboard-layouts=fi

Norwegian Bokmål

locales=nb_NO.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=no

Norwegian Nynorsk

locales=nn_NO.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=no

Testing

Please check and test different locales. If they work (or don't!), please contribute that information to the wiki. :)

Hungarian

locales=hu keyboard-layouts=hu

Latvian

locales=lv_LV.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=lv,ru,us keyboard-options=grp:switch,grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll

Russian

locales=ru_RU.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=us,ru keyboard-options=grp:alt_shift_toggle

Like Windows you press Alt+Shift to toggle between Cyrillic and Latin keyboard layouts.

Does your locale have a translation for the browser?

Search for your code under 'Binaries' of browser locale packages.

Chinese support example

At the boot menu, entering live locales=zh_CN.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=zh as this picture demonstrates, sets up Webconverger for the Chinese locale.

Webconverger boot options for chinese support

Once booted in Chinese, or Japanese and Korean environments CONTROL+SPACE allows to switch between keyboard input modes via scim.

Webconverger portal in Chinese

Please give feedback about anything. If you don't like the font or see some other rendering problem, I am very interested to solve these problems.

How CJK support works

CJK support requires a bunch of extra fonts and complex logic for the input system. Since most Webconverger users currently are Western, it seems a little unfair to bloat the image by 100M+ for locale support rarely used Asian input methods.

So CJK is currently supported by downloading the locale support packages on startup from http://cdn.debian.net/debian/ with a if-up.d hook.

Currently this "on network ready" hook is a little fragile. Sometimes the network isn't quite 100% ready on a if-up.d hook. Please help identify issues by testing and reporting bugs. Please do not be embarrassed by your English language skills, the list is very friendly!

Ideally place an order for a customised copy of Webconverger with these CJK support packages in an image for you.

Any suggestions to improve this locale support mechanism would be acknowledged.

Reference

To look up the right codes, see:

/usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED on an Debian system

Lookup your country's codes at ISO 3166.

See the Debian live manual on the topic of languages.

Furthermore