Bug#559795: debian-installer: The purpose of choosing a country is unclear

[Florian Zumbiehl <florz@florz.de>]

Hi,

> On Monday 07 December 2009, Florian Zumbiehl wrote:
> > On the one hand, the non-localization case is a bit illogical
> > when it tells you that the country will be used for determining
> > your locale(!?!). Also this is explained only after you have
> > selected a "region", the purpose of which seems mysterious at
> > first.
> 
> Hmmm. The region dialog is only shown first if
> - you are installing in expert mode
> - you selected a language that does not have multiple variants.
> (And I agree further improvement is needed for that case.)

I guess that the non-localization case counts as not having
multiple variants, then? I couldn't find any differences between
experts and "normal" mode, though, in that regard ...

> > On the other hand, your choice of country limits your choice of
> > time zones. It seems sensible to me to use that information as
> > a default, as it usually will coincide, but IMO it should be
> > possible to override it, so that you can select a de_AT locale
> > with UTC+5, or whatever applies to you. Those are not logically
> > pointless choices, as time zone configuration tends to depend
> > on the place where you are living while the locale tends to
> > depend on the user's cultural background.
> 
> Correct, and that really is fully supported now.
> 
> Try the following:
> - start a default installation
> - select German as language
> - select Russia as country, which means
>   - select "other" in the initial shortlist
>   - select Europe
>   - select Russia
> - you are then asked for your "preferred locale"; select de_AT.UTF-8
> - later in the installation you will be asked to choose between the time
>   zones valid for Russia
> 
> The important thing is to really select the country where you live 
> initially and I suspect you did not do that.

Now I get it ... but I think the interface really goes to some length
to obscure that possibility ;-)

After all, it doesn't say anything about which part of that selection
can be overridden lateron - you are being told that it's for time zone and
locale, not that it's for the time zone, and for the suggestion of a
default locale that you can override. Thus, you can't really tell what
you should reply if those two settings do not coincide in your case, and
one of the possible choices is wrong. And that you usually should select
the country you live in seems likely to not be applicable in the special
case of time zone and locale not overlapping.

Now, I don't know whether the documentation clarifies this, as it's a long
time since when I last read the debian installer documentation - but I
assume that this part of the installer really should be usable without any
documentation?!

Florian