Strange upgrade behaviour (Gunnar Hjalmarsson)

[Michael Bauer]

> I think the scope of this list is narrowed to translations rather than
> everything l10n, but let's disregard that in this case and keep talking.
Sadly there is no 'everything l10n list' I'm aware of... l10n somehow 
seems to be a bit of an unwanted child.
> Ok. Personally I wouldn't call it "force", since it's respective
> application that it's designed to use a display language in accordance
> with the current locale.
I didn't give it that name. It's still 'force' because the user cannot 
pick and choose easily on an application by application basis about 
which UI language they want. Someone might want Filezilla in a different 
language because the translation is real bad or maybe Firefox in a 
different language because they want to practice. We've had this 
discussion before I think.
>
>> Usually both of us consider shipping a locale when it is reasonably
>> complete.
> Thinking of Skype?
Well, those were Björn's words, not mine. The point was that Gaelic 
LibreOffice had completed its translation in 2010. After much tearing of 
hair I found out that LO had been restricted to 12 locales on Ubuntu in 
January this year and it wasn't until a month or so ago that we finally 
got a fix.
> If I understand it correctly, you say that there is a more updated gd
> translation available than what's currently shipped with the
> libreoffice-l10n-gd package. If that's the case, I would suggest that
> you file a bug against the libreoffice-l10n package.
No. I was getting frustrated that there seems to be a fairly arcane and 
undocumented process through which LO locales end up on Ubuntu ... via 
Debian. It was never a LO bug. The critical gateway was, frustratingly, 
Debian...
> I have also been surprised a few times when opening Language Support and
> noticing that Firefox translations were suddenly missing, so apparently
> they were silently uninstalled at some point. Can't tell when or why.
>
> The update of missing language support packages, which is carried out
> when you open the Language Support GUI, can be accomplished with this
> terminal command:
>
> sudo apt-get install $(check-language-support)
Yes but if we want to have any chances of 'selling' Ubuntu to normal 
users, we should try to avoid steps like that at all cost.
> I have played with the thought to propose that something along those
> lines is carried out via Software Updater. Suspect that such a change
> wouldn't be completely uncontroversial, though.
Echoing GunChleoc here, can't see that either
> "I only want to use British English. Why am I prompted to install
> language support packages for South Africa?"
>
> The explanation is that that's how the language pack system is designed
> currently. Either you have English - all English - installed or not. But
> some users are (for to me unknown reasons) very picky about installing
> only what they need.
So because some multi-country locales are lazy about the ranking of 
their preferred locales, all locales which don't (probably most which 
aren't English) have to settle for a headache? An odd argument (I know 
it's not your POV).

Michael