Qingjiang (Brian) Yuan wrote: > Hi, Dave, > Thanks for the reply, please see below for more information: > > Dave Miner wrote: > >>> The following are some options of the localization packages >>> installation: >>> >>> 1. Current solution, only C locale will be installed unless you >>> choose one of the big rules language as the installation language or >>> manually check GEOs from customized install. >>> 2. Install all locales by default, inform customers to deselect some >>> only if the disk space is limited >>> 3. Separate locale enabling packages from pure translation packages >>> and install all locale enabling packages by default, and install >>> other translation packages by manually selection during installation, >>> but this should be clearly explained to customers before they choose >>> "Default Install" or "Customize Install". >>> 4. Provide downloadable, easily installable and removable locale >>> patches or packages so that customers can add/remove locales easily. >>> >>> Most Linux distros are using the 2nd option, but I prefer the 3rd >>> and also the 4th :-) >>> >> Clearly there's dissatisfaction with the current solution, so we'll >> just rule out #1 right off the bat :-). >> >> #2 is attractive, in that it's similar to the proposed answer to the >> driver problem - you may not know you need it until much later, and >> then having to hunt around for the right one is a painful experience, >> so let's just not make you do it. I'd guess it's the simplest in some >> ways. > > Right, it's the simplest way :-). > Oops, I should change the #2 to the following since all of the locales > will also be installed in #3 by default: > 2. Install all localization packages by default, inform customers to > deselect some only if the disk space is limited > > One problem is you will get translated GUI, error messages and online > help if you login to some locales to do some i18n testing. This is not > what most of the English speaking developers would like to see if they > are only doing some i18n testing for their software products.
That would seemingly only be an issue if you actually set a non-standard locale as the default, though; you can login under your normal locale and just set it to an alternate locale for the processes where you're doing the testing. > Another problem is unless the installed Solaris is something like a > SunRay server for many users speaking different languages from a > multinational company, usually it's not necessary to install the > translations of all languages :-) > Yeah, it seems that the situations where you need all of them are pretty limited, so it may not be the best default. >> I'm not sure what the engineering implications for #3 or #4 are (how >> much restructuring of existing packages, etc.), > > The package separation for #3 has already been done in Solaris. Basic > locale enabling packages (locale enabling, minimum fonts, input methods, > iconv, X11) are in Solaris Software CD 1 for CD based installation > purpose, a few are in CD 2, most of the other localization packages ( > extra fonts, input methods and pure translations, etc.) are in the > Languages CD. (Document translations are in separate docs CDs) > > We are planning on the downloadable locales for #4, but not a lot > progress so far. We need to work together with installation team and > also CNS team to decide the format and how to release those downloadable > packages. > This does have some commonality with locating and installing additional drivers, so we may be able to leverage any work that's going to be done for that realm. One problem I see is that, while Update Connection might be attractive as a Sun solution, it's not necessarily oriented at being usable for other OpenSolaris distributions. >> if you can elaborate on that it would be helpful. I also don't have >> the stats for the amount of disk space that #2 consumes vs. what might >> be saved by the other alternatives; if you have some rough guesses, >> that would be useful data, too. > > The current size of all localization files are about 900MB after > installation, the translation packages are about 30MB for each of the 9 > big rules languages, so it's about 900MB extra disk space for #2 and > 630MB (900MB - 9*30MB) for #3 where only locale enabling packages are > installed by default. And I believe more and more locales and > translations will be added into OpenSolaris very soon :-) > So #3 is about a 15% premium for space, where #2 is about 20% vs. a current Nevada complete installation, I think. Big enough numbers that we need to think a bit carefully about it, because it does affect both performance (as you noted subsequently) and ability to install just based on available space. Dave
