Bug#156044: Fallback to English help doesn't work

[Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes <gaute@verdsveven.com>]

Tysdag 1. oktober 2002 12:04 skreiv Chris Halls:
>
>    drwxr-xr-x    8 root     root         4096 Sep 11 20:20 de
>    lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            2 Sep 11 20:20 en -> de
>
> So, the symlink that you mentioned is created for you, and help is only
> ever available in one language for the whole system.

No, it's the other way around. The symlink above is not needed, because German 
OOo will look up help from the de directory.

However, if you install OOo in for example Danish, there is no translated help 
package available. If the English help is installed, it doesn't work until 
there is a symlink da -> en.

> Yes, it would be nice to have such a system where help is installable in
> several languages, with a fallback to English, but this requires source
> modifications.  The Mandrake packages already have them but I haven't had
> time to apply yet.

It seems to me like OOo does this already. I modified openoffice.org-help-fr 
so that it does not conflict with openoffice.org-help, and so that the 
symlink en -> fr is not created.

I then installed openoffice.org, openoffice.org-bin, openoffice.org-l10n-en, 
openoffice.org-l10n-nb (not-yet-released Norwegian Bokmål translation), 
openoffice.org-l10n-fr, openoffice.org-help-en and openoffice.org-help-fr 
(modified), all built from 1.0.1-5+woody.

$ LANG=en-US oowriter
=> English GUI, English help

$ LANG=fr-FR oowriter
=> French GUI, French help

$ LANG=nb-NO oowriter
=> Norwegian Bokmål GUI, *no* help

(The nb situation applies to all languages without translated help.)

I then created the symlink nb -> en, and the help now appears in English as it 
should.

I don't know the Mandrake packages, but perhaps they are even more 
sophisticated? A possible improvement would be to allow partial help 
packages, with for example only Writer help. This will not work without 
modifying the source.

The simple solution is to remove the conflict, and remove the symlink en -> 
language. Then you can have multiple help packages installed without any 
problems at all.

I don't know what would be the best way to implement the symlinks I propose 
(language -> en). Perhaps the openoffice.org-help-en package could create 
them all at once, skipping those that are already installed. Any other help 
package would then have to check if the symlink to en exists, and remove it 
before installing the translated files.

Regards,
 Gaute Hvoslef Kvalnes