Re: Esperanto translations?
(for simplification of exchanges, I've subscribed myself to the
-esperanto mailing list. Of course, apologies in advance for not using
the language. I hop you won't mind too much)
> eo_XX seems a step forward from having no valid locale for any
> speakers at the moment.
That's my opinion also and, well, this is why I mentioned that having
a working translation for d-i would add some weight to the request of
including it in the locales package.
I recent months/years, I have won some legitimity with the locales
package maintainer(s) which I may try to use for addin my voice to
people requesting this locale (which *is* valid).
> > Esperanto is spoken in something like 130 or 140 countries, and because
> > of the glibc-locales design there also must be 130 or 140 locales.
>
> Why? Do other languages have a locale for each country, even if they
> share all features?
Yes and no. "Multi-country" languages usually have a locale for each
country the language is used in but this mostly depends on having
someone doing the hard work of writing the locale.
Most French contributors in this list know that fr has fr_FR, fr_BE,
fr_LU, fr_CH, fr_CA, for instance. Same for Spanish-speaking locales
where all South and Central America is covered in addition to es_ES.
This does not prevent people to chosse another language/country
combination in d-i, say French then Germany. In that case, the country
information will only be used for location-related parameters (mirror
choice, time zone...) and the default locale will be a "fallaback"
locale (fr_FR here).
However, this needs that at leat *one* valid and supported locale
exists. This is why we need one for Esperanto.
Usually, in such case, we choose the "natural" locale : when I had to
write one for Malagasy (lang. of Madagascar), I of course choose
mg_MG...then submitted it to the locales package maintainer who
incorporated it.
So, indeed, for things properly working, we just need one eo_WHATEVER
locale to exist, which will be used as a fallback.
While I'm at it, something VERY important that slept out in this
discussion : the list of supported languages for sarge is
*closed*. For size constraints, and for being sure that we don't
induce problems with initrd size for D-I RC2 and now RC3, Joey Hess
has requested that we stop adding languages to sarge-targeted D-I.
So, since september 2004, all "new" languages that come in are calle
"prospective" languages and will be really incorporated in d-i
packages when the D-I team will have decided that the last D-I release
before sarge release has been made.
This is why Malagasy, Macedonian, Tagalog, Hindi, Punjabi and a few
others (less advanced) are currently held out D-I releases. They're
even not available on daily builds.
That would also be the case for an Esperanto translation.
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