localized packages

[Reinhard Mueller]

Hello,

sorry to jump into that discussion. I'm not an active contributor to
Ubuntu [yet], still I'm planning to use and professionally support
Ubuntu, and I'm very interested in the localization system in Ubuntu
being as good as possible. So please let me add some thoughts:

I guess this will be given already for Hoary anyway, but just to make
sure: if a user selects a language upon install, he should get all
translations to that language without having to manually add packages
(like openoffice-l10n-de et al, or language-support-de)

Having read through the threads about the language packs in the
ubuntu-devel archive, some ideas come to my mind that seem to not have
been considered at all. Maybe they are unrealistic, I can't really
judge:

F2-3a: Generate a language deb per language and package, but do not
include them in the package list. Instead, change apt-get to
additionally download and install $package-$language whenever $package
is requested

F2-3b: Same as above, but don't change apt-get but make the preinstall
script of the "normal" package check the configured language(s) and
download/install the language debs

F2-3c: Make separate language debs only for package with big translation
files and handle them like oo.org or mozilla; this way, one could
probably reach >50% of the effect with minor effort

F2-3d: As a better solution to F2-3c and probably for several other
dependencies: introduce conditiononal dependencies, like
Depends: foo, bar, {if installed language-support-de: foo-de}
could also be helpful for stuff like
Package: zope
Depends: {if installed mysqldb: zope-msqldba}

Further thoughts:
* It really does not make sense to install translations of packages you
don't have installed. A really good system should IMHO only install
translations of installed packages.
* Personally, I don't think that translation only updates occur very
frequently. Having the needed, all the needed and only the needed
translations installed by a standard setup and then keeping translations
in sync with package updates is (IMHO) the most important point.
* It seems to me that a system that bypasses dpkg for installing
translations (like F5) would mean to renounce the security features
built into dpkg or to duplicate a lot of work
* It could be a good idea to provide a graphical front end (in gnome) to
let the user select additional languages he wants supported on his
machine. AFAICS the user has to run "dpkg-reconfigure locales" to get
more than a single locale on his system.

Feel free to ignore some or all of my comments, but I would be very
happy if I could contribute something to the matter.

Thanks,
Reinhard Mueller
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