Debian Edu CD: One per language?

[Konstantinos Margaritis <markos@debian.gr>]

Hi all,

  A few days ago I just did our first Debian-Edu/Skolelinux 
installation in Greece, here in Nafplion!! At last after lots of 
beaurocracy we got the green light to do it! hooray!!

Everything worked out smoothly using finnarne's pr3 sarge-based CD and 
we had only little problems (eg. with serial mice configuration on 
the thin client side) as far as installation goes. On the other hand, 
I noticed that the CD does not include any support for Greek right 
now (no l10n/i18n packages whatsoever). After some discussion on irc, 
it was made obvious that there is no space on the CD to fit more 
l10n/i18n packages, not without removing some other stuff, which I 
would not like. On the other hand, the problem will become more 
apparent if more languages are to be supported eventually (well, we 
ARE after world domination right? :-)

So, I suggested that we split the Debian-Edu/Skolelinux ISO in one per 
language, after all, since the installations will become 
nation-specific after one point, it will make sense to only include 
the stuff we need there. So we might have a skolelinux-en.iso, 
skolelinux-no.iso, skolelinux-el.iso, etc.

Just for the l10n files, we will save ~5MB per language, not counting 
the OO help files which are huge (~10-15MB ). So still assuming that 
out of the 7 languages we go down to 3-4 (since some standard 
languages are good to have included anyway), it will save ~15-20MB on 
the CD per language (so for 4 languages we save ~45-60MB).
This space might be used for other software, and I'm sure it will be 
welcomed :-)

There is also another benefit to this approach. Each CD might have the 
language settings in d-i preseeded, so that for example a 
skolelinux-no.iso will always start in Norwegian (which flavour 
exactly you'll have to decide though :-)
This means less questions for the installations yet!

Just to show I'm not talking bull right now, I've already discussed 
this with Petter and Finnarne and I've already started implementing 
this. But I need some info from all of you. I'd like to create the 
i18n packagelists, and I include the template I used for the 
Norwegian CD. If you want you could send it to me to test it. I 
wouldn't want to commit anything yet, as I'd like to have it 
completed before I mess things up :-)

The process will have to be fully automated, so when the build cd 
command is issued it will build CD images for all languages (this 
will be a flag obviously, for testing reasons). 

So, I'd like to listen to comments, ideas, but most of all I'd like 
the i18n-LANG files from you :-)

Regards

Konstantinos

Architecture: any
Description: Metapackage to l10n/i18n packages (Norwegian)
 This metapackage depends on l10n/i18n packages for Norwegian.

Depends:     koffice-i18n-es, koffice-i18n-de, koffice-i18n-fr, \
             koffice-i18n-nb | koffice-i18n-no, koffice-i18n-nn | koffice-i18n-nony, \
	     koffice-i18n-se
Why:         KDE Office translations
Responsible: ? 
NeedConfig:  no

Depends:     kde-i18n-es, kde-i18n-de, kde-i18n-fr, \
             kde-i18n-nb | kde-i18n-no, kde-i18n-nn | kde-i18n-nony, \
             kde-i18n-se
Why:         KDE desktop translations for relevant languages.
Responsible: ? (someone need to check the package list is complete)
NeedConfig:  no

Suggests:    ifrench, ingerman, inorwegian, ispanish
Why:         Dictionaries for languages supported by Skolelinux and
             localization-config.
Responsible: ? (someone need to check that the package list is complete)
NeedConfig:  yes - set default ispell dictionary

Depends:     openoffice.org-l10n-nb, openoffice.org-help-nb, \
             openoffice.org-l10n-nn, openoffice.org-help-nn, \
	     openoffice.org-l10n-de, openoffice.org-help-de, \
             openoffice.org-l10n-fr, openoffice.org-help-fr, \
             openoffice.org-l10n-es, openoffice.org-help-es, \
	     openoffice.org-help-en
Why:         Supplementary OpenOffice.org packages.
Responsible: Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes
NeedConfig:  no

Depends:     myspell-nb, myspell-nn, myspell-en-us | myspell-en-gb, \
             myspell-de-de | myspell-de-at | myspell-de-ch, myspell-fr, myspell-es
Why:         Spelling checkers for OpenOffice.org
Responsible: Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes
NeedConfig:  no

Depends:     mozilla-firefox-locale-nb, mozilla-firefox-locale-nn, \
             mozilla-firefox-locale-de, mozilla-firefox-locale-es-es, \
             mozilla-firefox-locale-fr-fr, \
	     mozilla-thunderbird-locale-nb, mozilla-thunderbird-locale-nn, \
	     mozilla-thunderbird-locale-de, mozilla-thunderbird-locale-fr
Why:         Translation packages for Firefox/Thunderbird
Responsible: Finn-Arne Johansen
NeedConfig:  no