Re: How many people need locales?
On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 05:06:21AM -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 06:29:43PM +1000, Roger So wrote:
> > A "universal OS" (which we claim on our website), with dysfunctional
> > support for the language which the user speaks natively, even during the
> > installation phase, is insane IMHO.
>
> The OS is operational without locales. Albeit, it lacks certain
> functionality that a great deal of users need. Of course, most people
> use apache, but that doesn't mean it should be included with our base
> install, does it?
Perhaps I was being a bit harsh; sorry.
However a lot of languages don't display properly without locales, and
that's important: without it a user who's not reasonably proficient in
English would not even touch the system, let alone completing the base
install and then "apt-get install apache".
> Installing locales from an interface that asks questions in english is
> somewhat broken, IMO. The language support needs to start with the
> installer, not locales. If the installer is run under a different
> language, then I don't see why debootstrap can't detect that and decide
> to add locales to the package list. I don't think it should be "by
> default", is my point.
This I agree with.
> Anyway, the whole point of Santiago asking this is because he thinks
> that the locale.gen file should be copied over at postinst, instead of
> being a conffile. This conversation has little to do with that.
Ah, I see. It wasn't obvious from the original posting ... (after I
re-read it again, it is though. Maybe I'm just having a bad day...)
Back to the original question: I'd say that most non-English speaking
users would customise locale.gen and uncomment maybe 1-3 locales.
However what are the disadvantages of it being a conffile?
Roger
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