Re: Not sure about recent change in tzsetup

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

On Thursday 12 November 2009, Colin Watson wrote:
> > The downside of the merged change is that it means the tzsetup
> > selection is now displayed at high priority for *all* users, while in
> > the past it would only be displayed for countries that have multiple
> > timezones.
>
> No it doesn't. If there's only one choice for the timezone, then you get
> a medium-priority question asking you to confirm your current time, as
> before. The only difference is that this question is now more useful,
> because it gives you the option of bailing out and selecting a different
> timezone when d-i's default is wrong. I did not change any question
> priorities.
>
> In some ways it is suboptimal to offer this facility only at medium
> priority just because the country you selected only has one timezone,
> but I didn't want to add an extra question.

Right, and this means that you introduce a significant inconsistency in the 
functionality offered to users installing at default prio who happen to 
select a country with multiple time zones versus a single time zone.
The first will be offered to select any random time zone at default prio; 
the second only at medium prio.
Exactly the reason why I was also not happy enough with my previous patch 
to commit it myself. The new patch I posted yesterday does not have that 
problem.

My viewpoint is that you're solving the problem in the wrong place. The 
problem was a limitation in localechooser, which is now resolved.

I'm currently considering the following additional changes:
- revert your patch: with localechooser in SVN it's no longer needed
- apply my patch to allow selection of UTC at medium priority
- add a para to the description of time/zone saying something like:
  "If the desired time zone is not listed, then please go back to
   the step "Choose language" and select a country that uses the
   desired time zone (the country where you live or are located)."
- change localechooser to display the locale selection dialogs at high
  priority if the default locale is not <language>_<country>; this means
  that the use case that prompted your change would then be supported in
  default installations instead of requiring to install at medium prio

The last change requires some thought because localechooser will need to 
behave consistently when you run it multiple times with different 
selections.

Cheers,
FJP