[i18n] Input Method and Fonts improvements for Gutsy

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 02:55:46PM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (stripping CC: list)
> 
> Matt Zimmerman [2007-08-13 13:00 +0100]:
> > On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 08:35:33AM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> > > Conceptually, a user (usually) wants one language-pack-* for the
> > > language he prefers to see his desktop in, and several
> > > language-support-* for all languages he wants to create documents in.
> > > 
> > > So it is useful to install a language-support-* without the
> > > corresponding language-pack-*, which is why they do not depend on
> > > them, just recommend.
> > 
> > Is the small amount of space occupied by language-packs worth the confusion
> > of maintaining two separate sets of packages?  I think this is something
> > which is fairly clear to us, but not to random developers and users.
> 
> I am not sure what you mean. The packaging structure of -support and
> -pack are totally different and could not benefit from merging the
> source packages (to the contrary).
>
> Or do you mean that language-support-XX shuold depend on -pack-XX?

I am unconvinced that users commonly think in terms like "do I want
translations, or input support?"  I think that they simply want support for
a particular language, and everything that entails.  It is easy enough to
change the settings to suit their needs, and it is much easier to manage
these preferences in the desktop than in the package manager.

So I feel that it would be appropriate to provide them as a single unit.

> > There is some debate over whether the level of translation we ship on the CD
> > is appropriate.
> 
> I agree. Current CDs hardly have translations at all any more. They
> are always "first against the wall" when new features and packages
> arrive. I would love to see some improvement here to cover at least
> our 'top 12' languages again (including switching to better
> compression, etc.).

Arne is doing some work in this area, and we will see what comes of it.

> >  Ubiquity ships translations for all languages regardless of
> > the language packs installed, and having only partial language support on
> > the CD can give a negative or confusing impression: why is the panel
> > translated, but not Firefox or OpenOffice?
> 
> This bit of course is just a lack of feature (due to those upstreams
> cooking their own soup for i18n), not actually by design. As soon as
> Rosetta is able to export Firefox/OO.o translations, we will include
> them into the standard language packs. As I understand, we are very
> close to this for Mozilla products.

If language-pack is meant to provide translations, and language-support
input support, then language-packs should provide Firefox and OpenOffice
translations as well, without regard for the technical details of how the
translations are provided.

That is, even if we need separate packages to provide the translations, the
language packs should depend on those.

-- 
 - mdz