Bug#684954: installation-reports: fine apart from timezone & apt translations

[Jamie Heilman <jamie@audible.transient.net>]

Christian PERRIER wrote:
> Quoting Jamie Heilman (jamie@audible.transient.net):
> > Christian PERRIER wrote:
> > > Localechooser makes it very clear that the country location impacts
> > > the timezone choices (at least as clear as one can be in a two
> > > sentences screen). 
> > 
> > Sure, I don't debate that, but I heartly debate the utility of forcing
> > me to lie and say my server is in London just to set the #@!$ing
> > timezone to UTC.

Note to anybody who thought that would even work: it won't, as it
turns out, Europe/London isn't the same as UTC.

> > Just as forcing the user to set their location to Asia/Japan to
> > set their locale to ja_JP.whatever would be stupid, forcing the
> > user to set system location to somewhere where the system isn't to
> > achieve the desired timezone is equally stupid.
> 
> You don't have to say your server is in Japan to get a ja_JP locale.
> Please better choose your arguments. This one is wrong. Ask Japanese
> users.

That's my point, I'm saying language *isn't* tied to location because
doing so would be wrong, much like tying timezone to location is
wrong.  The same logic applies.  Host location is a red herring, the
installer shouldn't even ask about it.  It should just ask what
timezone the user wants to configure, and let them choose from the
full list.  If for some unfathomable reason we simply *must* be forced
to select a server location, then stuffing the less-likely timezone
selections under a sub-menu called "other" would be acceptable too.

> > > If you want to use a given timezone, then choose the appropriate
> > > country in localechooser. This is meant for that purpose.
> > 
> > That's inane, and unless I've totally forgotten the logic flow of
> > previous installations (ISTR being able to actually choose my timezone
> > from a list in previous Debian releases), it's a sad regression.
> 
> It is not. Nothing changed about this since woody.

Wow, has it been broken for that long?  Admittedly, I usually
bootstrap new systems with debootstrap after slapping a drive into an
existing host, so it has been a while since I took the traditional
route.  Running through older installers...

Sarge   - asks for timezone explicitly and lets the user set it to
          anything; this is the correct behavior

Etch    - timezone selection is restricted based on language
          selection

Lenny   - timezone selection is restricted based on language
          selection

Squeeze - timezone selection is restricted based on language
          selection

So Wheezy is arguably a small step forward, restricting timezone based
on language is worse than restricting it based on location; but the
installer has still regressed, the last time it did the right thing
was Sarge.

-- 
Jamie Heilman                     http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/