Language chooser at login

[Robert Ancell]

I've cc'd in Mika and John, who worked on the design of the new greeter
(not the greeter that is currently delivered with Oneiric) and Charline
who does user testing as they will probably have good opinions on this
feature.
> I'm of the opinion that we should keep providing a language chooser
> widget on the login screen, either in the greeter or on the top panel.
> Before giving the reasons for my view, I'd like to clarify which kind of
> language chooser it is that I advocate.
This seems to be completely the opposite way we should tackle this.  We
need to know what requirements the user has for language support, and
this will determine what GUI elements are appropriate to achieve this.
> If you change the display language within a session, it does not take
> effect in that session, but only after you have logged out and logged in
> again. The language setting is one of the few things that works that way.
Yes, it's an unfortunate limitation of the system we use.
> Those who typically make use of the language chooser on the login screen
> are reasonably users who alter between two or more display languages.
> Maybe that group is a small share of the Ubuntu users, but to them it's
> much more convenient to be able to set the language before logging in,
> compared to logging in, opening language-selector, changing the
> language, logging out and then logging in again.
Can you provide some examples of these types of users, and why/how they
currently switch language?

>From what I've gathered talking to people the classes of user are:
1. Users who set the system language at install/first boot time, and
never change it (the vast majority)
2. English as a second language users, who switch between their native
language and English (this is a class of user I don't understand well). 
I think the reason for this is because the translations are not always
good enough?  Is this a power user feature?
3. Testers/developers who want to easily change language for testing
(their requirements should not be exposed to normal users)

I haven't heard of any standard user requirements to switch between more
than two languages, or two languages that do not include English (please
post here if you know of any).
> Future growth of Ubuntu users will probably be higher outside the
> English speaking countries than the average growth, so both the number
> and percentage of multi-lingual users, and consequently also the group
> that appreciate an opportunity to change language at login, ought to
> increase.
And I'd expect these users to use their preferred language and not need
to change it at all.  We need to work out what "the group that
appreciate an opportunity to change language at login" are trying to
achieve.  The multi-lingual users I've talked to do not change their
language settings frequently.
> From an Ubuntu user perspective, the question isn't if we should add a
> language chooser to the login screen, but the question is whether it
> would be a good idea to remove the feature. Is there any disadvantage
> with it worth mentioning for those who don't use it? Has anybody
> complained of its pure existence? ;-)
Users who don't use this feature are not going to miss it.  Users who do
need to be able to achieve the functionality they had before, but not
necessarily using the same method.

There are disadvantages to keeping this feature:
- This feature is quite complex to support.
- By having this feature both in the login screen and in the control
center we are duplicating functionality but providing an inconsistent
method of configuring it.
- Users can accidentally change it, giving an opportunity to make their
session unusable.