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Re: Localized default values (was Re: [d-i] Problems with various debconf templates)



Denis Barbier wrote:
> Isn't English spoken in quite a lot more countries than United States? ;)
> Why is United States a good default value whereas France is not for French
> speaking people?

Because the US is reasonably well connected to everywhere and has Debian's
main round-robin mirror network in it. If these facts of servers and network
topology should change, we should then change the default of course.

A lot more languages than English are spoken in the US too. You really think
a Spanish speaker in California or Tennessee wants to hit a mirror in Spain?

> Then why is a default value provided?

A default value is probably going to be *shown* whether you explicitly
provide one or not. Whatever country starts with "A" and is at the top
of the list is probably not a good choice.

> Seriously my feeling is that users are getting bored when they
> choose a language and provided default values do not take this
> information into accout (when choosing keyboard layout, mirrors,
> default system language, etc.).

Bored? If you want to provide sane location-based defaults, then ask the
user where they are. This information, if in a reasonable form, can be
re-used by base-config, which already has to ask about it for time zone
setup. (Or do you think I should force all French speaker's computers to
be set to GMT when they install? :-P)

-- 
see shy jo, listening to Spanish on the radio in Tennesee, oddly enough

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