X11 keymaps were originally merely meant to represent what symbols are printed/engraved on the keycaps of the keyboard hardware used (see Appendix A of the X11 protocol specification).
I think this is probably too restrictive now as a definition of what is allowed. The Irish keyboard (which Sergey mentioned) is the same hardware as a UK one, but does not behave the same way: it has a standard way of accessing the extra accented characters needed for Irish. The Irish keymap which I implemented is based on the MacOS one; Windows uses a simpler layout.
The point is that although the keyboard hardware may be the same, users can require different behaviour. You have to consider the usual keyboard hardware sold in a region plus the language(s) the user wants to type on it, not just the engravings on the keys. The UK keymap matches the hardware sold in Ireland but is inadequate for Irish use, and I imagine there are other such cases.
This means that deciding what goes in the distribution could be very complicated. You'd have to consider every physical keyboard type, and list all keymaps which could reasonably be associated with them, say for all the native languages of the countries where a given keyboard is sold.
Se'amus
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