Re: slang, boot-floppies, and wide character support
Hi.
In <[🔎] oapuesaqnj.fsf@arroz.fake>,
on "05 Apr 2001 00:58:56 -0400",
with "Re: slang, boot-floppies, and wide character support",
Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com> wrote:
> Taketoshi Sano <kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp> writes:
>
> > Akira Yoshiyama <yosshy@debian.or.jp> who made the patch for termwrap,
> > has made the customized boot-floppies for potato used on NEC pc9800
> > series. It uses the patched slang and newt libraries in bf-utf and it
> > can be used with Japanese encodings (euc-jp) using some tweaking in
> > dbootstrap (euc-jp strings requires special treatment in line break,
> > so it uses an auxiliary utility to shrink strings correctly).
>
> Ok, well, that "auxiliary utility" would need to be available.
Can I create shrink_string subdirectory in utilities/dbootstrap/
and put this utility as ja.c ?
As far as I see, the modification will be needed on Makefile and
boxes.c in dbootstrap/ directory.
If there aren't any objections, I'll commit the required modification
into woody version.
> > The package (in source and binary) is distributed from ftp site of
> > Debian JP, and I think we can use the hack in it for woody i18n
> > boot-floppies.
>
> I don't know what this package contains.... but let me make myself
> clear:
>
> 1) I will *reject* a forked newt/slang being placed in the
> boot-floppies sources
> 2) the wide version of newt/slang that we need *must* be uploaded to
> Debian main, and it must be done *now*
I see. I think that forked version of boot-floppies for nec-pc98
just uses the old newt/slang in bf-utf8 without additional change,
so if only we can provide the same version in Debian main, there
may be no problem as for i18n boot-floppies and euc-jp version.
> To restate, any forked or patched newt/slang or other requirements
> *must* be placed in the distribution itself.
It is no doubt that this is the biggest problem now.
> If no one has the time to package the wide libraries, and any other
> auxiliary stuff needed for boot-floppies, I have no problem shipping
> woody w/o i18, although I think that would be a shame. Especially
> after all the time put into it by folks here and by the translators.
And we need them for utf-8 dialog, so if we can't provide them,
we will not be able to provide the i18n version of the installer
even when the debian-installer can replace the current boot-floppies.
I had tried to create them before the potato release. But it was
already frozen time for potato, and I couldn't rely on me that
I did it correct on devel packages (libnewt-dev and slang1-dev),
I have not uploaded them.
I've read on this list that David Whedon has already packaged
the bf-utf directory itself. Is this already uploaded ?
If we provide the utf-8 support in base (for i18n'ed base-config)
then we may need the slang and newt libraries with utf-8 support,
I think.
What is the best way ? Just use utf-8 in i18n boot-floppies
(i.e. just in dbootstrap only), and ignore it on the installed
Debian system, or use utf-8 in the main/installed Debian system
as well as the installer ?
> > yosshy said that he wishes to see his patches merged
> > into the Debian official boot-floppies, but he does not have enough
> > time to do it by himself.
>
> Well, I certainly don't have the time to do it for him.
Sure. Since I wish to have i18n (and Japanese supported) installer
for Debian, I'll try to extract the required modification from his
work and commit them into our official boot-floppies source tree.
> > We can support i18n in root disk of boot-floppies currently,
> > but since woody debconf and base-config supports i18n, it
> > will be nice if we can support i18n on base system as well.
> >
> > Can bogl-bterm be used for base system i18n in woody ?
> > Are we safe to include it in base tar ball ?
> > (Well, this is debootstrap topic, but it is needed for i18n
> > goal of Debian installation, and this experience will work
> > for debian-installer as well).
>
> I don't see any problem with this -- what are the risks?
I don't know how well tested the bogl-bterm is. Just wonder.
And I think the current packages including base-config has
messages for Japanese in euc-jp, not in utf-8, so we need
some work if we use utf-8 to show the messages with bogl-bterm.
When slang/newt dialog is used in base-config (maybe via
debconf ?), we also need utf-8 support from slang/newt in
the installed (main) Debian system.
> > And if we use utf-8 for all messages, then we have to use
> > encoding conversion at somewhere since most packages have
> > messages not in utf-8 but in euc-jp for japanese.
>
> I recall there was a reported problem also with config files written
> by dbootstrap in i18n mode being writting as utf-8 files and that
> messing up the desired configuration....
Well, so there may be softwares which can not handle the config files
written in utf-8 encoding. If we use utf-8 as main encoding in Debian,
we need to work on them.
--
Taketoshi Sano: <sano@debian.org>,<sano@debian.or.jp>,<kgh12351@nifty.ne.jp>
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