dpkg support for internationalized/localized programs
Hi,
few weeks ago I statred to translate lang_pl.h (from dinstall from boot-floppies)
into Polish. At the moment I have made resc???.bin and may install my Debian
GNU/Linux 2.0 talking to me in Polish. Unfortunately not all the time.
Why? because not all programs are localized into polish. Some of them are not
even internationalized.
As a lot of GNU programs are already internationalized and most of them
are even localized to pl_PL, wanted to use ii in installation disks set.
First I started to look into description of dpkg. And saw there is no support
for any information about internationalisation and localization.
So I started to wonder how it could be done.
First some general questions.
Is Debian going to be International?
I hope so. But, if so, there must be some policy and support for fluent
conversion to from Debian 2.0 to fully internationalized Debian 200.0i.
There are two aspects. Internatinalization of packages, that means
modifying source code of programs to make them aware of other languages.
Second is localization, that is mostly translation from English (or other
language) into local one.
That means that package must be internationalized first. So we have
to states: true or false. It's simple, so there is no need to add
anything to package control, as if package is not internationalized
one have no choice, has to use it. And when it became internationalized
the old version will be forgotten.
Then we can localize an internationalized package. For many languages
And everybody agrees that there is no reason to keep in one package
all localized versions.
So we can face to situation, a package which is internationalized and needs
additional localization. This is the perfect one because we use the same binaries
for all localisations.
Package which is localized, without internationalisation - which means
binaries for two localized versions differ. As it's easier to localize
then internationalized program (specially badly written one) at
the beginning we may have some very important packages to be localized
without Internatinalization and may exist for some period of time (see
Japanese distributions)
How we could cope with such a situation. Here are my conclusions.
One way is adding special attribute to dpkg control. I do not know
dpkg internals so I dot know what problems it may cause. We can add
special attribute eg. 'locale' which contains list of locales this
package provides. This way we can split package into
internationalized version, binaries which provides standard (heh ;)
en_US, en_UK, or en_AU) locales and other package(packages) which may
provide additional localisations of particular package. Those
additional packages will just require (depend on) internationalized
binary package to be installed.
Why adding this additional attribute?
Because it will provide a way to distinguish a internationalized
package - the one which provides standard localization. And
install only locales we want.
What about filenames of packages? What about that ?
foo-bar_1.0.2-3.deb - internationalized with default localization
or old one not internatinalized - one need
to look inside to check it out
pl-foo-bar_1.0.2-3.deb - polish localization. It may provide just
localization, then it will require
foo-bar_1.0.2-3.deb to be installed
or it may be only localized package which
will conflict with foo-bar_1.0.2-3.deb.
Why I've written all those? I do not know :)
But after few days of working on boot-floppies
I think in near future it is much easier
make localized version of boot-floppies,
as it's Internatinalization will take long time.
(as it depends on packages it includes).
So what do you think about adding extra attribute,
and what scheme of filenames for localized versions of packages
should be used.
What should be done to come to some conclusions and make
them official Debian policy (any references to documents I may
do knot know would be appreciated).
--
piotr pogrzelski
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