Re: d-i first-stage configuration

[Jeremie Koenig <sprite@sprite.fr.eu.org>]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 12:31:14PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> What if we changed how some items on the main menu are displayed, so
> the short version (before the whole installer is loaded) looked
> something like this:
> 
> 	Language:	English
> 	Country:	United States
(...)
> languagechooser would continue to prompt at high priority, but
> the other items at the top of this menu would ask their questions at
> medium priority, and come up with reasonale defaults when possible.

I like it, and I've got some suggestion:

Add a new entry to language chooser reading something like "Choose this
to proceed without internationalisation" (LANG=C). When it is chosen,
make country-chooser disappair from the menu.

Make it the default (won't hurt anybody), and make the language question
priority "high", so you can avoid it by booting at priority "critical".
(nearly) Non-interactive basic installation could be made to work with
just a DHCP server and no seeding.

In order to implement this stuff (i may eventually try it), what about
adding two return codes to the menutest script. One for disappairing
from the menu (country-chooser when LANG=C). The other one would
indicate that the script has send to stdout :
	- The menu item title to use;
	- Debconf substitutions variable values to be used with the
	  main-menu template.

This way, the resulting "extended item titles" could be translated with
no pain.

-- 
Jeremie Koenig <sprite@sprite.fr.eu.org>