Language support summary/discussion

[Martin Pitt]

Hi!

Matt Zimmerman [2005-02-23 14:14 -0800]:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 03:31:08PM +0000, Paul Sladen wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, Martin Pitt wrote:
> > > These account for approx. 30 MB worth of language-pack debs [..]
> > > add langpacks from the top of the list until 20 MB are reached.
> > 
> > [I apologise for commenting when I was not at the -meeting...]
> > 
> > I find it crazy that an internationalised Operating System (one intended to 
> > have wider support than any other before it) is cutting the allocated CD
> > space from < 5% down to 3%.
> 
> As discussed during the meeting, the reason for being conservative in
> allocating space is that the system _will_ grow as time goes on, and we
> don't want to be in a position of having to drop some language packs from
> the CD as a result.

I think that should be tackled by other means. It is really hard to
explain and in fact embarassing to explain to users why Hoary made
such a big regression in language support. They installed Warty and
got their language (at least for the well-translated ones). Now they
install Hoary or the live CD and get a crazy wild mix of some
translated items from .desktop files and a mjaority of English
strings; it looks particularly nasty if e. G. German and English are
used in the same sentence.

So here is my proposal: 

- We use the full set of 11 most widely spoken languages on the Hoary
  CDs (also the live CD, this will be the thing for showing off). This
  will take about 30 MB, we have this space right now (even on powerpc
  there are still 50 MB left, and we can gain even more by stripping
  more packages).

- If space gets short for Hoary+1, we can always split the language
  packs into -desktop and -supported; if we ship only the -desktop
  part on the CDs, then we have exactly the same space requirements as
  for the totally unstripped case (as in Warty).

We should really find a consensus soon, we need to get this ready by
the preview.

What do you think about this?

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt                       http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer            http://www.ubuntulinux.org
Debian GNU/Linux Developer       http://www.debian.org
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