Re: Language support
> > > 1. Messages for dbootstrap. At the moment we have 14 languages. Every
> > > language is about 32K in trm format what gives us about 470K (too much!).
> > > But if we compress it's only 160K.
> > >
> > > 2. We do not need any keyboard map here (almost everywhere only up and down
> > > arrows and enter keys are used + English words (like system name etc))
> > >
> > > 3. We do need fonts to display those messages. 12 of them are using latin
> > > characters of some kind plus Russian that uses KOI8-R, plus Japanese that
> > > uses something quite special :). LatArCyrHeb covers 13 languages, what
> > > gives us 4K plus a couple of Ks for acms (that are needed!). I do not
> > > know how large Japanese fonts are.
> > >
> > > That's all. This gives 170K without Japanese stuff. Is it too much? I heard
> > > there were successful experiments with 2,8M images. These are certainly
> > > suitable for CD booting. We must provide multilanguage installation in this
> > > case, though we may want to provide a special image (root disk??) for every
> > > supported language.
> >
> > So we need 14 versions of boot-floppies for each architecture? Not nice ...
> Sorry, I do not quite catch your point: where I said it's needed 14 disks? We do
only if we can't doit for potato with one floppy ... not in time ...
> need one disk for each architechture! We just have to copy additional 170K to
> each, and these 170K allow us to select a language.
Yes, thats the right direction.
> > For a floppy based setup only C is ok, but for CDRom we should support all
> > 14 languages. CD into the cdrom, reset (Bios changes), reset, autoboot and
> > the first table is then:
> >
> >
> > -------------------------
> > | English |
> > | Franch |
> > | Deutsch |
> > | ... |
> > ------------------------- Entries in there native language
> I am not sure that everything will work this way. That's why I asked (in other
> message) how the things get loaded. There are two scenarios:
>
> -- current. right after loading syslinux presents the user with a possibility
> to specify a set of additional parameters for the kernel. at the same time,
> the user may browse additional information using F1-F10. In this case, we
> just *have* to provide one image for every language, as, if I understand
> correctly, syslinux is not localizable.
This setup is before linux is loaded. I prefer it after loading linux, because syslinux
is only available for i386 (and alpha?). Other loaders for != ia32 aren't so comfortable.
> -- a new one. :) syslinux (or other boot loader) loads default kernel without
> waiting for *any* user input. right after that the user is presented with
> a menu of possible languages (localized environments), and then she tries
> to configure her kernel (by adding necessary modules).
> UNFORTUNATELY, I do not know whether this is ever possible. I believe
> there are devices for which drivers should be compiled-in.
Yup, this is the way we should go, and it is possible. It's more or less the same way
as to select keyboards and mices.
> > But what then? All languages included or dynamic loaded ?
> Included and dynamic loaded. :)
Greetings,
Hartmut
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