Re: Bug#195481: fragmented location info: hassle for users especially mobile ones
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 03:35:05PM -0600, Barak Pearlmutter wrote:
> Right now, this stuff is easy to get inconsistent, and each one
> requires effort to figure out. Some of them are even tricky to
> change, or even to remember.
>
> It would be nice if these would *ALL* assume default values given just
> one, on both a global system-wide basis and over-ridable on a per-user
> and per-session basis.
>
> In other words, when I move my laptop I should be able to put in the
> new lat/long and, assuming everything else is set up to default, all
> these other things should be filled in with their most probably
> values. Eg the nearest ICAO station, the most popular language in the
> location I'm in, the size of paper they use there, etc.
>
> Similarly, if I fill in just a country and it is a small country, and
> I haven't filled in lat/long or anything else, everything should snap
> to reasonable values. If that's not enough to figure out eg the time
> zone, at least the timezone menu should start with a list of timezones
> in that country. If I fill in a lat/long outside that country, it
> should give me a warning. If I fill in a city it should take the
> lat/long in the center of that city.
>
> If some user fills in a different country & city, blam everything
> should "just work" for that user.
>
> I think this could be accomplished with appropriate debconf stuff and
> a "location-related-query" executable that looks at global info,
> per-user files in their home directory, and environment variables. Or
> maybe a library, for easier retrofitting into little programs. With
> some modular architecture so one can add new location-related values
> which can be derived from lat/long/alt, and which therefore if filled
> in can also be used to constrain this and therefore other derivable
> values.
A few people were discussing the need for sharing of debconf templates
on #debian-devel on freenode the other day/night. The example that came
up at the time was for newsreaders, and how 10 different newsreaders
shouldn't all ask the same quesions (what is your news server, etc.).
There needs to be some standard questions in the shared namespace for
all these programs to use and draw upon. What we cursorily came up with
is that the various maintainers that need the template, in this case
newsreader maintainers, would reach a consensus on -devel about a
template, which would then be put in to the shared namespace. This
would have to be documented somewhere central, for later reference. We
all agreed that it should be on the web, but there was debate about
whether or not a list should be included in one of the debconf
packages, or perhaps some other package.
I'd like to hear some comments on this whole idea. It'd help integrate
Debian more tightly, and would provide even more incentive to totally
standardize on debconf for certain tasks. It would be appropriate for
this bug as well, allowing integration of location based data.
- David Nusinow
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