Re: base-config localisation
On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 08:27:10AM +0900, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
> Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@computer.org> writes:
>
> > Please, if you do this have dboostrap install a system-wide
> > configuration file with the language as the user inputs in installation.
> > Somethin like /etc/system.language.
>
> Make that /etc/environment.
(...)
No. /etc/environment is not related to the system, is the default
enviroment for *users*. I'm talking about system services here, not users.
There is a small, but important different.
(..)
>
> It's been there all along for people to check.
I do not agree with this. Localisation is slightly different that setting
a system-wide language. We cannot have programs parse localisation on
installation since they then need to have some knowledge of "locale" and
be able to parse properly /etc/environment which might be cluttered with
much other stuff or might not even have a locale.
For example:
a) a program uses the locale to determine what to do on installation but
thinks that locale = XX_YY with XX=language codes. Wrong! I can have
LC_ALL="spanish" (many other aliases available). Programs should have to
understand both /etc/environment *and* /etc/locale.aliases = more
processing.
b) a system administrator might not want to set up a system-wide
environment since he has no users, or has people from too many different
countires. However, he *does* want his mailing list to give out messages
in a given language.
Take in account that server software (ftp servers, mailing lists, web
servers) cannot usually take in account localisation because it is not
provided by the client software (for web servers there is content
negotiation however). Thus, it has to be customised on a per-system basis.
Debian should provide a way for *server* software to be easily customized.
We need:
- translators to translate the different server's templates (ftp,
apache...) I have done so myself and sent occasionally bugs to the
maintainers.
- packages that, when appropiate, use the translated templates to setup
the main server
This could even be used by packages to install configuration files which
had their comments *in the system's language*! Currently there is no way
for Debian to provide translation/localisation of these files, for
example, but we surely could provide a way to do so
Regards
Javi
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