Re: Automating of localizations
On Wednesday 29 October 2003 13:57, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Please check whether language-env package meets your need.
Actually it does for many of my needs!
Thanks for noting this, Debian has become so big it's difficult to
keep track of everything...
> It prepares so-called "dot files" for a user who invoked
> a command "set-language-env". Though I am the maintainer
> of the package, the concrete contents of dot files for each
> language are left to contributors.
I have already started creating the greek ('el') files.
> If the "configuration" can be done completely by dot files,
> I think you can use this package.
This is under discussion. If it's just the matter of changing the
locale setting and having everything to work out, then yes. However,
I have to change the linux console font, the keymap switching for the
console and make some other necessary changes to the configuration
files of X (namely the keyboard settings to allow changing keymap)
and also for kde/gnome. For kde/gnome, these settings can be
customized via a dot file. But for the other cases I would need to
change the XFree86-4 file, and also some console configuration files
(/etc/console-tools/config, /etc/inputrc, etc). And i don't want to
tell the user to "do it him/herself").
>
> However, it cannot do system-wide configurations.
> It is because I think system-wide locale configuration is
> sometimes dangerous. For example, there are no ways to
> configure Linux console to automatically support Japanese.
> Unconditionally setting LANG variable is dangerous in such
> a case, because Mojibake
> (http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/mojibake/) occurs. Imagine if you
> are a root user and you cannot read some important message because
> of Mojibake.... (In Greek,
> please imagine reading a Greek document with Latin-1 font.)
> Of course there are languages for which system-wide setting
> is not so dangerous. However, I am not interested in it
> unless someone contributes a working code.
Unfortunately, since it's not a just case of setting the LANG
environment but a more complex process, I will have to do some
meddling with the system wide files. For example, would you object if
I contribute to your package a script that works only for greek
locale and sets the system wide files for X and the console? Of
course it would ask the user (debconf?) if he/she wants tampering his
configuration files.
Thankfully the process of setting the root console and X in greek in
Debian is well tested and documented and not much of a deal anyway.
But it's user-unfriendly to ask the users to do this setting manually.
> I imagine Greek people can understand the concept of Mojibake.
only too well :-)
--
Konstantinos Margaritis
Consultant - IT Services
Debian Developer
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