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Re: Default language for system



Marek Habersack wrote:
> The only universal solution
> to all that I can see is to have a self-destroying script that would ask the
> user when s/he logins first what language to set up for him and then modify
> the appriopriate shell startup file. Sure, it's a dirty solution, but I
> can't think of any other at that moment :((

So far 'user-ja' supplies a 'user-ja-conf' command to establish the user's
personal Japanese environment.  Also new preparing user-ja has a menu item
to invoke user-ja-conf.  Your way can be a solution to make it easier.  
Another is to have a file '/usr/local/sbin/adduser.local' but /usr/local
should not be used for Debian packages.


Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> I\264m german but I certainly don\264t want my linux to talk german to me,
> same will be true for many polish users. Don\264t mess with their
> settings.

Why?  If

(1) the admin is a Polish speaker and prefer Polish to English, 
(2) the admin is very sure all of the users of the machine are Polish 
    speaker and they prefer Polish to English, and 
(3) no one use Polish-disabled console environment,

then you can set LANG in /etc/environment, while I prefer to set it in 
dot-files in the home directories for all users.  If the admin prefer
English or s/he knows there are non-Polish-speaker user, the admin can
select not to set LANG.  To force is bad but to offer selections is good.


Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> Then file a bug against the bootdisk to query the user for the
> language of his choise. Just changing it is evil and if random
> packages start poping up requests for language choise it will get
> anoing.

I know this approach is preferable, straightforward, and beautiful.
But it is difficult to add 'Japanese' menu in the boot floppy because

(a) it means we have to have one more floppy only for Japanese font, and
(b) I heard that 'kon2', a software to enable Japanese (and Korean 
    and Chinese with optional font files) to be displayed on console, 
    does not work for some machines.

The problem (b) can be solved by trying to invoke 'kon2' and to kill
it after 10 seconds and asking whether 'kon2' worked well or not.
(It is like when trying a new screen mode in X Window System).
If 'kon2' did not work well, boot floppy can use 'Ro-ma ji' expression,
that is, Japanese expressed in ASCII characters.  (For example, 'KUBOTA'
is 'Ro-ma ji' expression of my name.)

But even if (a) and (b) are solved, boot floppy should not set
LANG variable for Japanese.  It is because there are many environments
which cannot display Japanese such as Linux console, xterm, Eterm,
gnome-terminal, rxvt, and so on.  That is, the term (3) is never
fulfilled for Japanese.

Anyway, some Japanese member are working on boot floppy and I think they
must recognize these problems.  I don't know much on boot floppy.



Piotr Roszatycki wrote:
> At this time the administrator and the users have to know English language.
> But it isn't true for many people who want to install the Debian 
> distribution.
> I saw a few my friends who installed RedHat or SuSE because of translated
> install program and default settings like LANG variable.

This is same for Japanese.  Many distributions such as TurboLinux,
RedHat, Vine, PlamoLinux and so on stress how they are well Japanized.
For example, installer shows Japanese message, you can input Japanese
character in Netscape, a proprietary Japanese input method with high
conversion efficiency is bundled, scalable (True Type) Japanese fonts 
are available in X, and so on so on.  But I have not heard that any
Japanese distribution can use Japanese characters for file names (Of
course MS-Windows can do).


Piotr Roszatycki wrote:
> I'll submit a wishlist for boot-floppy. LANG variable should be set on
> first installation.

(A) LANG selection should be independent on admin's preferable language.
(B) This selection should not be asked for CJK people or basic settings
    for many softwares (input conversion engine, its interface to XIM, 
    emacs, kon2, and so on so on) should be done at the same time to 
    try to avoid side effects.
(C) This selection should be able to be modified or erased after 
    installation easily (with one command, if can).

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.or.jp>
http://surfchem0.riken.go.jp/~kubota/


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