Upload of the iso-codes package - issue of the MK country name
For interested parties...
Iso-codes including a "common name" for MKD being "Macedonia, Republic
of" while the field for "official name" still contains "Former
Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia" has been uploaded to the
delayed/2-day queue.
"Macedonia, Republic of" has been chosen over "Republic of Macedonia"
in order to remain consistent with other entries which have
"Republic/Kingdom/..." appearing after the name. This leads to a more
natural sorting of names and will make the choice easier to our users.
Replacing the former entry (FYROM) is the consequence of the
discussion which can be followed on the debian-project mailing list:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/09/msg00127.html
This means that the package will be part of Debian "unstable" in 2
days. And it will reach the "testing" branch (thus the next stable
version) in 12 days if no Release Critical bug appears.
This is a NMU (non maintainer upload) made in agreement with Alastair
McKinstry, the package maintainer as he hadn't time enough for taking
care of this.
I have worked with translators of the package, asking them to change
their translations and choose what they all feel is the most
appropriate.
Most of them have chosen to use the equivalent, in their language, of
"Macedonia, Republic of". The Greek translation has been kept as is,
thus the greek equivalent of FYROM. This was a choice by Konstantinos
even though his own feelings were more inclined to "Macedonia,
Republic of". He justifies this by the strong reactions which would
certainly occur among Greek users if he unilateraly changes his
translation. I think that he made the best decision for that part.
With this decision, we (package maintainers, on behalf of the Debian
project) have tried to apply the less worse compromise for all Debian
users, waiting for the case to be politically sorted out.
The countrychooser package (the installer module responsible for
prompting users about the country they live in) has been rebuilt by
using these data.
The consequence is the following:
- Users in English language and wanting to choose MK as country
(though there is no en_MK locale, this is possible), will "see" a
first screen presenting them with most English-speaking countries and
a "other" choice....When using "other", the next screen shows
"Macedonia, Republic of" among all other countries. This is the one
and only place this name appears
- The same goes for all other non-English/non-Greek/Non-Macedonian
languages : the name only appears on the "other" screen and the name
appearing there is the one which has been judged the most appropriate
by the relevant translator.
- Users choosing the Greek language will never see any country choice
on default installs, because the only greek locale in Debian is
el_GR. So, only users doing install at "expert" priority will see a
screen prompting them for a country. In this screen, the name for MK
will be the greek equivalent of FYROM
-Users choosing Macedonian (this translation does not exist yet so,
this is a theoretical case) will never see any country choice screen
for default installs and will see "Macedonia, Republic of" on
expert-style installs
The contents of the iso-codes package is currently no used anywhere
else in Debian, as far as we know. For instance, the country names
list in KDE is maintained upstream by KDE developers (for the record,
it lists "Macedonia" ATM...)
I hope that this decision, as a conclusion of this discussion where
too much heat leaked in too much places, will be agreed by as mush
users as possible.
Some translators probably need to adapt their translation of the entry
for MK as I haven't been able to contact them, so if they wish to
change what is currently in the iso-codes package, they should contact
me.
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