Re: suggestions for improvement

[<rjk@greenend.org.uk>]

Jonathan Walther writes:

> No.  Consider the case of America and Canada.  They share 5
> timezones between them, but differ in the default dictionaries that
> are appropriate.  Too much work for too little gain.  However, if
> you make a nice patch and submit it to the maintainer of the
> "dictionary" package, perhaps it will get in.

Fair enough; probably the timezone is the wrong place to start.  But
given a bit of geographic information, you can guess sensible defaults
or in some cases fixed values for a number of things:

 * timezone

 * locale settings (language, number formats, currency, ...)

 * dictionary packages to install

 * usenet hierarchies to feed (de.* in German-speaking places, etc.)

 * ISPs that one might want to connect to

 * choice of dialup software/hardware (e.g. UUCP is more popular in
   some places than others, ditto ISDN, some places have cable modems
   and others don't, ...)

 * mirror site to use for updates (or even for the initial install,
   for users with cheap bandwidth)

 * whether to offer certain software for install (crypto is still
   illegal in some countries, other countries may have patent problems
   with some software, &c).

Some of these are probably less useful to think about than others.
However I'm sure there's lots of other things that vary in a fairly
predictable fashion from place to place.

ttfn/rjk