Bug#185831: Bug#196774: Plans for fixing this bug ?

[frank@kuesterei.ch (Frank Küster)]

Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org> wrote:

> Quoting Atsuhito Kohda (kohda@pm.tokushima-u.ac.jp):
>
>> By the way, is the following format is okay?
>> 
[...]
>> Default: french[=patois], german[=austrian-alte_Rechtschreibung], ngerman[=naustrian-neue_Rechtschreibung]
>> _Description: What hyphenation patterns to load.
>> 
>> or should use underscore like
>> 
>> _Default: french[=patois], german[=austrian-alte_Rechtschreibung], ngerman[=naustrian-neue_Rechtschreibung]
>
[...]
> You should put there either "Default"-->this would mean that you don't
> consider that having different defaults for different languages is
> needed.
>
> Otherwise, you may put "_Defaultchoice:". This special po-debconf
> entry allow translators to use a default which is different for each
> language.

It might be worth considering this, changing the default depending on
the language. However, note that some (many? at least me) people use
locale C as root and there "home" locale only as users, but installing
is done as users, of course.

Besides that, I would:

- suggest to give no default at all; people will usually be able to find
  their own language

- in any case, drop german. alte_Rechtschreibung means old orthography,
  and although there are still a couple of people who don't like the new
  (and some who are undecided and take the opportunity to grap what they
  like best from both, like me), in any case:

  * having both doesn't make much sense (as a default, of course both
    have to be present)

  * I would recommend dropping the old, since the new one is to be used
    in any official document, e.g. for exams or theses, or formal
    letters.

    Furthermore, it's easy to figure out that you want german if you
    dislike ngerman; but perhaps it won't be so straightforward for a
    newbie to find out how to kick his admin if he can only use german,
    but doesn't get what he wants (namely, new german hyphenation, but
    he doesn't know how the file is called).

Bye, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie