Re: sensible-x-terminal and x-terminal-emulator
Hi,
From: Robert Bihlmeyer <robbe@orcus.priv.at>
Subject: Re: sensible-x-terminal and x-terminal-emulator
Date: 30 Jun 2000 12:54:06 +0200
> > Next, on condition that GNU libc supports 'de_DE' locale but doesn't
> > support 'de', gettext should obey the locale behavior of libc.
>
> It does make sense, since for the purpose of gettext, the region
> specifiers are simply superflous. If all I care about is message
> translation, the langauge is enough. Of course, it may be confusing to
> newbies, but I think they should use the aliases, anyway. We'd need to
> heavily expand /usr/share/locale/locale.alias first, though.
Translation is mere one category of locale or internationalization.
Nor is it the most important category. The most important category
is, IMHO, to ensure display/input native character on which all other
categories depend. Thus, if gettext outputs translated messages even
when setlocale() fails (example: LANG=de), this is *very* confusing
for users. I suspect almost Europeans (exactly speaking, ISO-8859-1-
language speakers) has wrong idea that LANG=de is correct in the
present Debian system.
I don't know whether LANG=de *should* be a correct locale or not.
(It *is* wrong in the current Debian system.)
However, gettext should obey LC_MESSAGES locale category.
> > I see. However, I wonder what will occur if I installed some packages
> > which provides /usr/bin/x-t-e after I installed s-x-t...
>
> You're right, that wouldn't work. There's still one way: register
> s-x-t as a high-priority alternative to x-t-e, then in s-x-t parse
> /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator, taking into account
> all alternatives except s-x-t itself. This should do it, but is an
> ugly kludge from hell.
I hesitate to do so because:
- The pager has both sensible-pager and /etc/alternatives/pager and
the editor also has both sensible-editor and /etc/alternatives/editor.
sensible-{pager,editor} don't provide /etc/alternatives/{pager,editor}
but call /etc/alternatives/{pager,editor}.
The Policy Manual says that sensible-* are the default.
Thus I think X terminal emulator can (or, should) imitate them.
If sensible-{pager,editor} and sensible-xtermemu work in different
way, it would be a confusing situation.
- If the admin had used update-alternatives and set his/her preferable
x-terminal-emulator, the information about which terminal emulator
was selected will be lost. In this case, 'alternative' mechanish
cannot provide preference.
- As you said, parsing /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator
is ugly. The format of the file may be altered in the future.
---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.or.jp>
http://surfchem0.riken.go.jp/~kubota/
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