locales and IMEs...

[Derek Martin <code@pizzashack.org>]

Hi folks,

I am installing a test machine, and I was able to install all of the
locales on the machine manually by running dpkg-reconfigure locales on
the machine, and selecting all the locales.

This works, but the trouble is, I need to do this on a lot of
machines, and doing it this way is very tedious and time-consuming.
We have a lot of international users, and it's important that we be
able to provide them the ability to use their native language, no
matter what it may be.

I'm using an automated install with the debian CD image and a preseed
file, so ideally I'd like a way to do this automatically from the
install.  Failing that, a shell command which can run
non-interactively to install every possible locale will suffice.  Does
such a beast exist?

And while I'm at it, for many languages, it's not enough for the
locales to be available.  We'll also need the fonts, and all
associated IMEs to be installed.  Is there some magic package I can
install to make all of the IMEs for all of the various languages
available without too much of a hastle?  The goal is to set the
machines up to use UTF-8 by default, so a UTF-8-capable IME system
(like iiimf) is what we'd prefer.

Is there an easy way to do this?  If not, is there some list of
packages somewhere which will give me what I want?  FWIW, the Red Hat
and/or Fedora installers make this very easy, and I'm looking for the
same thing on Debian.

Thanks very much.

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D