In KDE, not all keyboard layout labels are displayed, nor can they be edited.

Correction:
"there something in that box" should read "there is something in that box".

Correction:
"Turkish QWERTY are both reduced..." should read "Turkish QWERTY and Turkish F are both reduced..."

Thank you for your comments.

Editing the labels is possible but there seems to be a bug in the configuration module. As soon as one completely clears the label in an attempt to edit it, the label resets to some default value. As a result, editing the label only works if the user makes sure that the label field is never completely empty during editing. Additionally, it seems impossible to set an empty label (in order to show only the flag but no letters in the taskbar indicator).

Also, when adding a fresh "US English" layout, the label is set to "us". Next, selecting a different layout variant doesn't change the label to match, only after clearing the label field the matching label (like "usd" for dvorak variant or "usm" for mac) shows up.

Can you confirm the above on your system?
Is this causing the symptoms you described or do you experience other problems with the keyboard layout settings? If so, please include detailed instruction how to reproduce the problem. Be sure to also mention both (k)ubuntu and kde versions used.

Setting package to kdebase-bin (kdebase) since it provides /usr/lib/kde3/kcm_keyboard.la
[Kubuntu Feisty with KDE 3.5.6]

I think the summary I gave this bug is a little confusing because my understanding of it changed as I was writing it. The editing bug you mentioned does exist, but it is not the bug that has been bothering me.

The labels themselves are fine as they appear in the little edit box. However only some of the labels appear in the label column in the list of selected layouts, and of these labels only some in turn are properly represented in the KDE panel. For example US international (usi) appears in all three. Turkish F appears in both places in the configuration dialogue, but not in the KDE panel. But US Dvorak only appears in the little edit box.

Cannot reproduce that here; once a label is successfully entered in it's field and the setting applied, it always appears in the list in the configuration as well as on the panel icon for me. What version of ubuntu and kde are you using? Can you still reproduce the bug if (for testing purposes) you create a new user on your system and log in to kde as that user?

On a side note: I've reported the label editing bug(s) separately as bug #131136

I'm really confused now.

Previously when I added another layout to my menu a useful label would appear in the label box, although only on one occasion ("usi") did it also appear in the label column. And if a label did appear in that column it still might or might not be displayed correctly in the system tray. However now I am finding that:

(a) If a useful label appears in the label box, but not in the label column, simply editing that label (e.g. by deleting the last letter and then re-entering it) will cause it to be displayed correctly in both the label column and in the system tray icon.

(b) If I add another layout to my menu, e.g. another instance of US international, the labels suggested are not as useful as they once were for me. For instance I am now offered "us" instead of "usi".

The above observations apply both to my own user account and to one freshly created.

I am using KDE 3.5.6 in Feisty.

I've no idea what's going on here. My only guess is that I may have inherited settings from previous KDE use in the (distant?) past, but that still doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense to me.

Old settings are not going to create problems on newly created accounts - hence the request - so that's indeed unlikely to cause this.

This is fixed in KDE4 in Intrepid.