Re: i18n of tasksel (and cdebconf)
Hi,
From: Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>
Subject: Re: i18n of tasksel (and cdebconf)
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 17:31:28 -0400
> tasksel itself is optional. The main problem is that this will involve
> adding slang1a-utf8 to the base system installed by debootstrap/d-i if
> it is not already there.
cdebconf already Depends: on slang1a-utf8, so it won't be a problem.
> A related problem is that we're seeing a great deal of extra stuff be
> added to the base system in the name of i18n, which is fine except there
> is no mechanism to remove it on systems where there are eg, no Japanese
> users.
I understand your anxiety. However, the whole world will be UTF-8
sooner or later and everybody will need UTF-8 support, though I don't
think it is as soon as Sarge's release.
Everybody on this planet speak one (or more) certain natural langauge(s).
There are no superiority nor inferiority between languages. In this
meaning, everybody need i18n. If a "system without i18n" supports a
certain part of languages and doesn't support other languages, and if
a "system with i18n" supports more languages, I think the design of
these systems is wrong.
Well, I agree that this is an idealism. The reality is that most of
softwares are written for 8bit encodings and non-European-language
speakers (such as CJK, Arab, ...) will need "add-on" supports.
I think the largest problem around file size and installation is
fonts. CJK people need certainly much larger font than other
people do. The install system will not need another large component
of encoding conversion tables nor CJK input engines.
> I would prefer to not upload a tasksel using this new library until it
> is in testing already, and until debootstrap installs it as part of the
> base system.
Ok, I will wait for it, or I can write a patch for tasksel which
*contains* libtextwrap itself. The source code of the library is
as small as about 400 lines (including copyright notice).
> Also, tasksel is only one of the task selectors that will be offered in
> sarge. The other is aptitude, which has no support for translated tasks
> at all yet.
If there are no translation, there are no possibility for Mojibake problem.
If someone will add translation for aptitude, we will have to solve the
possible Mojibake problem.
---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.org>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
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