[PROPOSAL] tasksel: improve and enhance language tasks
(please keep both lists CC'ed to replies. No need to CC me of course)
Holidays are good for deep work, so here I am with a huge proposal
about "language" tasks.
I have read all language tasks contents and, with no doubt, they
deeply lack consistency and, moreover, we do not really exploit the
potential we have with tasksel.
So, here I come with several improvements (all being already
implemented in rewritten language tasks on my laptop):
1) Introduce <language>-kde-desktop tasks
By introducing the kde-desktop task, recent tasksel version introduce
a problem: several <language>-desktop tasks include
kde-i18n-<language> package (or koffice-i18n-<language>)and thus
indirectly imply installing KDE...or installing a useless package, as
desktop does not install KDE anymore.
One solution to this seems to create <language>-kde-desktop tasks
which could be installed when <language> and kde-desktop tasks are
installed.
These tasks will contain the relevant kde-i18n-<language> package and
koffice-i18n-<language> package, when they exist.
Example for French:
Task: french-kde-desktop
Depends: french, kde-desktop
Section: l10n
Description: French KDE desktop
This task localises the KDE desktop in French.
Key:
Packages-list:
kde-i18n-fr
koffice-i18n-fr
This includes creating *-kde-desktop task for ALL languages which have
at least a kde-i18n-xx file, even those we do not yet support in D-I.
2) Include OpenOffice and Firefox l10n packages to ALL <language>-desktop tasks
Both OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox packages (which are installed by
"desktop") include their localization data to *-l10n-* packages.
I hereby propose to add these packages, when they exist, to ALL
<language>-desktop tasks. When the <language>-desktop task does not
yet exist, it is created with one of these packages, or both.
In the same time, I REMOVE mozilla-locale-<language> packages from
the *-desktop tasks which installed them, as the desktop tasks DOES
NOT install mozilla but "only" mozilla-firefox
3) Include myspell-* packages to ALL <language>-desktop tasks
myspell-* packages are needed for OpenOffice spellchecking.
I hereby propose adding them to the <language>-desktop tasks (or move
them there from the <language> tasks in some cases). Again, when the
<language>-desktop task does not yet exist, it is created with this
package.
4) Include aspell-* packages to <language> tasks
GNU aspell is now the standard spellchecking software on Unix systems.
I hereby propose adding them to the <language> tasks. Again, when the
<language> task does not yet exist, it is created with this package.
5) Create some empty tasks for dependencies
Here, I'm not really sure this is needed.
The above proposals imply creating some <language>-kde-desktop tasks
while no <language>-desktop or no <language> tasks exist.
For dependencies to be satisfied, some empty tasks need to be
created. For instance, the Tajik language has a KDE l10n and thus a
tajik-kde-desktop task is to be created. However, as no OpenOffice,
myspell or aspell packages exist for Tajik, no tajik-desktop or tajik
tasks are created by this process. Then I propose empty (temporarily?)
tasks to fill in the dependencies:
tajik-desktop:
# This task is actually empty and has just been created
# for tajik-kde-desktop to be installable
Task: tajik-desktop
Depends: tajik
Section: l10n
Description: Tajik desktop
This task localises the desktop in Tajik.
Key:
Packages-list:
tajik:
# This task is actually empty and has just been created
# for tajik-desktop to be installable
Task: tajik
Test-lang: tg
Section: l10n
Description: Tajik environment
This task installs packages and documentation in Tajik
to help Tajik speaking people use Debian.
Key:
Packages-list:
Conclusion
---------
All this would lead to the creation of a huge number of
tasks. Actually, tasksel includes 70 tasks. My proposal would bump
this number to 182.
The proposal would also change some existing tasks...but always to
adding consistency and NEVER removing existing installed packages.
I don't really know the consequence in terms of the FTP archive
organization and induced work for ftpmasters, if there are some. So,
apologies in advance in case my proposal implies a lot of work...
All these tasks are ready on my hard disk and I'm convinced they would
improve the localization a lot...especially if we later change tasksel
to install several language tasks when several languages are selected
during the installation of the system.
I know the consequences for translators: they will virtually kill
me...:-). But I'll manage...(and updates can be done with simple
search/replaces in PO files anyway)
Please feel free to comment...
As soon as I'll be back home, I will publish my modified tasks for
review by translators and D-I developers.
Non implemented proposal
------------------------
The desktop task currently install mozilla-firefox packages but should
IMHO also install mozilla-thunderbird packages. This probably is more
debatable (including debating in -devel), so I did not implement this
in my modified tasks.
Please comment as well...
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