Language support summary/discussion

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 03:13:55PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:

> (1) Which language packs should be shipped on the install CD?

We want to include the set of language packs which will maximize the utility
of the CD for the users who will receive it.  This means that it should
include the preferred language for as many of those users as possible.

We can't accurately predict who will receive Ubuntu 5.04 CDs, of course.

We can extrapolate some reasonable guesses as to which geopolitical regions
will receive Ubuntu CDs, based on data that we have access to:

- Regions to which Ubuntu 4.10 CDs were shipped
- Regions where open source software is popular, or increasing
  in popularity
- IP->Region guesses for Ubuntu downloads

And we can then make some guesses about their preferred language:

- Languages most commonly spoken by those living in the region
- Languages preferred by those living in the region (LoCo teams should be
  able to provide input in this subjective area)

Mako has access to a reasonable subset of this data.  Mako, could you put
together your top ten list based on whatever information you can collect,
and post it here for review?

Then, rather than arguing about criteria, we can argue about a concrete
list, and if it looks reasonable to us, we can run with it.  Given enough
information about the methodology, I think we can support the conclusions in
the face of any challenges.

> (2) How shall we eventually map the three different use cases of
> foreign languages to the metapackage structure?
> 
>     a. Reading foreign languages: this is mostly a matter of matching
>        font packages.
>     b. Creating content in foreign languages: This requires input
>        methods, dictionaries, etc.
>     c. Localization: This requires application translations.
> 
> These use cases are concentric, with a. being a subset of b., and b.
> being a subset of c. 
> 
> Ideally, this relation would be reflected in the dependencies, however
> that is tricky:
> 
> Currently our goal is to provide a basic set of fonts in Desktop to
> fulfill a. everywhere (are the current fonts enough?). 
> 
> Then we have language-support packages (for b.) and language-pack
> packages (for c.); these two recommend (but not depend on) each other.
> l-pack-foo must not depend on l-support-foo, since otherwise we could
> not ship l-pack-* on the CDs (the dependencies are too big). OTOH
> l-support-foo should not depend on l-pack-foo since a./b. don't imply
> c. (and shouldn't force to install translations just to get a few
> dictionaries).

As you note, users who want c. are a subset of the users who want b.
Therefore, the sensible approach seems obvious: l-pack-* should depend on
l-support-*.  It seems preferable to support a smaller number of languages
properly, than to provide incomplete support for a larger number of
languages.

What are the sizes of the various dependencies for l-support-*?  As you
point out, we already ship the necessary fonts as part of the desktop (or
intend to).

> (3) For Grumpy^W Bbb..., Bbbenn..., Hoary+1 we need a nice and
> colorful frontend for selecting various grades of language support
> (a/b/c). This should be a small pygtk application integrated in the
> Desktop/System Management menu.

Agreed.  I'll add this to the BOF schedule for Sydney.

Would it be possible to do it as an extension of gnome-app-install?  The UI
I imagine would be very similar.

> (4) Installer: Right now the standard mode just tries to install
> l-pack-foo and l-support-foo that matches the language that the user
> selected in the very first question. 
> 
> However, in expert mode there is a multiselect question that allows to
> install additional languages/locales. The idea was raised to show this
> question also in standard mode. Personally I think we should keep the
> status quo since support just for the main language will be fine for
> 95% of the desktops out there (especially if we have (3)).

I agree; we have not refined the idea sufficiently to expose this in the
default installation path.  For Hoary, users can use Synaptic to install
language-pack-* if they want them.

> (5) It was proposed to always install the English language pack (i.
> e. move it from Ship to Desktop). However, there was no justification
> for that in the discussion, so why should that be done?
> 
> Right now it does not make much sense to me. An user which selected
> English as his primary langugage in the installer will get teh English
> pack anyway. OTOH a French user will not see English texts as a
> fallback if there is no French translation even if he has the English
> language pack installed; he will see the C strings instead.

I think the idea was to enable the user to work with English texts (i.e.,
language-support-en) because these are very common.

-- 
 - mdz