Re: Bug#752045: [RFR] templates://dictionaries-common/{dictionaries-common.templates}

[Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org>]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2014 at 01:02:53AM +0100, Justin B Rye wrote:
> Agustin Martin wrote:
> > dictionaries-common uses a rather complex system to deal with the main
> > shared question. To make translation easier, it uses a normal question under
> > dictionaries-common control. All ispell dictionaries and wordlists provide a 
> > shared shared/packages-{ispell,wordlist} template, and am additional 
> > ${package}/languages template whose default value provides the language(s)
> > keys provided by the package (things like "castellano8 (Spanish 8 bit)").
> 
> So are we expecting "Choices_dictcom" to always be a list of language
> codenames like "castellano8 (Spanish 8 bit)"?

Yes,
 
> (Wait... what package provides that, anyway?  wspanish is just
> "castellano (Spanish)", and I don't see a wspanish-legacy...)

Wordlists generally provide a single value, but ispell dictionaries can
provide more than one. For instance ispanish provides
"castellano (Spanish Tex mode)", "castellano-utf8 (Spanish utf-8)" and 
"castellano8 (Spanish 8 bit)". All them use the same hash, but with
different options, so all them go in the same package.

> Try to look at it from the point of view of somebody who doesn't
> already know what the "available values" are values *of* and who or
> what they are available *to*.  If users are likely to end up looking
> at something like this:
> 
> 
>    The configuration question for "default-wordlist" is empty but some
>    elements are installed for the "wordlist" class:
>    
>    Available values: "american-huge (American English -- huge) british-huge (British English -- huge)"
>    Involved packages/Error: "wamerican-huge wbritish-huge"
> 
> 
> ... then this shouldn't need to be any more complicated than:
> 
> 
>    The setting for "default-wordlist" is missing, but packages
>    providing a wordlist are installed: wamerican-huge wbritish-huge

I like this one! I'd also like to reuse the same template for ispell
dictionaries and wordlists using something like

     The setting for "${question}" is missing, but packages
     providing candidates are installed: "${class_packages}"

Current code in dictionaries-common does not provide the list of
wordlist/ispelldicts packages, but since all them must provide a
/var/lib/dictionaries-common/{ispell,wordlist}/$package file containing all
the relevant info, it can easily be extracted from its name and a list of
them be put in "${class_packages}".

> > Is something like "castellano8 (Spanish 8 bit)". It is both the language
> > unique identifer and the language name, preferrably 7 bit and should not
> > change. We initially used a poor's man internationalization like that
> > (this system is more than 10 years old). Since debconf later allowed
> > C-Choices, an additional new translatable ${package}/elanguages was added.
> 
> If all that's needed is an ASCII key to identify a language, it's far
> from clear to me why the dictionaries don't have names like "fr" (with
> package names like "words-fr")...

See above about ispell dicts containing several entries. Wordlists use the
same system to help sharing code.

> > I did not put "${value}" here because is not a single word and could be a
> > bit repetitive, but I do not have problems adding it, just remember that is
> > not the package name.
> 
> When I asked "Is it something like 'wfrench'", it was because you
> hadn't actually said what it was.
> 
> It's not a disaster if the user is presented with:
> 
>       To fix this error, reinstall (or install) the package that provides
>       "francais (French)".
> 
> It would be better if it just told them the name of that package, but
> if that's impossible, maybe:
> 
>       To fix this error, reinstall (or install) the package that provides
>       the dictionary "${value}".

Agreed. With some minor changes in dictionaries-common code, package name
should easily become available. Using it, sentence may look like

   To fix this error, reinstall (or install) the package "${package}" that
   provides the invalid value.

or simply

   To fix this error, reinstall (or install) the package "${package}".

> >> I gather this isn't a typo, and that e-choices are connected to
> >> e-languages, whatever those are...
> > 
> > Not a typo, "${echoices}" is the possibly translated string, after
> > elanguages..
> 
> I'd worked out that connection and stalled looking for documentation
> for what elanguages are or what the "e" means.  Though come to think
> of it I didn't look very hard - I quickly got distracted onto trying
> to come up with plausible uses for the word "echo-ices"...

I did not mention, but it comes from extended choices.

Thanks a lot for your very useful suggestions and comments.

Regards,

-- 
Agustin