On 2011-07-05 07:06, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Marc Deslauriers [2011-07-04 23:29 -0400]:
>> If the administrator can set the default language when creating a new
>> user, it should be fine.

What, more exactly, do you mean by "set the default language"? As
regards "default", there is the system language which currently (in
Natty) is inherited as the user language at the creation of a new user.

Also, "set the language" tends to mean different things. Some simply
mean pick a locale from a "locale -a" list. In Natty you select among
the available _translations_, which is not the same thing. So far the
Oneiric UI for user management seems to just "pick a locale".

> I agree. With that, and the fact that the majority of use cases are
> already covered by the system wide default locale/language, I see
> little reason for putting back the huge complexity of a language
> selector in the login manager again. It took two releases, Perl
> scripts, a lot of shell code in XSession, and many bug fixes to get it
> working in a reasonable manner,

I'm not sure, but I think that most of the code you refer to actually
exists due to other things than the fact that Natty provides a language
chooser on the login screen. I'm thinking of:
- language = translation
- maintaining the LANGUAGE priority list
- handling language @variants correctly
- bugfree distinction between language and regional formats
- transition from .utf8 to .UTF-8
- set LC_* variable only when != LANG
- upgrade considerations

Whereever, besides the Control Center, the system deals with languages,
those aspects need to be tackled to avoid buggy behavior, and for that
you need code.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I fear there is a risk that much of the
progress (IMHO) with respect to language related matters we made in
Natty is already - two months after the release - about to get lost.
Please tell me that I'm wrong!

Indeed there is room for improving the code and avoid duplication. I'd
be happy to work with that as soon as the situation gets stable enough.
Due to the change of default dm and replacing the language-selector UI
with the GNOME ui, the state is anything but stable, so now is
reasonably not a good time to do that kind of code cleanup.

> and it is still prone to fail.

Please let me know if you have anything particular in mind.

-- 
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj

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