On 2014-11-23 23:58, Michael Bauer wrote: > ... the user cannot pick and choose easily on an application by > application basis about which UI language they want. Someone might > want Filezilla in a different language because the translation is > real bad or maybe Firefox in a different language because they want > to practice.
Most users prefer that you can set the display language once and that it's effective all over the desktop. Doing it per app instead is an idea that would be hard to sell. As always there are workarounds, though. While I usually have Swedish as the selected display language in Language Support, I prefer English in Thunderbird and gnome-terminal. It's accomplished with these two files: $ cat ~/bin/thunderbird #!/bin/sh export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 exec /usr/bin/thunderbird $@ $ cat ~/bin/gnome-terminal #!/bin/sh export LANGUAGE=en_US exec /usr/bin/gnome-terminal $@ >> I have also been surprised a few times when opening Language >> Support and noticing that Firefox translations were suddenly >> missing, so apparently they were silently uninstalled at some >> point. Can't tell when or why. >> >> The update of missing language support packages, which is carried >> out when you open the Language Support GUI, can be accomplished >> with this terminal command: >> >> sudo apt-get install $(check-language-support) > > Yes but if we want to have any chances of 'selling' Ubuntu to normal > users, we should try to avoid steps like that at all cost. Agree. I was not suggesting that we should make it a normal procedure to run that command manually. >> I have played with the thought to propose that something along >> those lines is carried out via Software Updater. Suspect that such >> a change wouldn't be completely uncontroversial, though. > > Echoing GunChleoc here, can't see that either I brought up the idea on IRC with Sebastien Bacher, one of the desktop developers: <quote from #ubuntu-desktop 2014-11-24> [09:51] <GunnarHj> seb128: Thinking of having the equivalent of "sudo apt-get install $(check-language-support)" be run without opening the language-selector UI, either in update-manager or as autostart. Any spontaneous thoughts? [09:52] <seb128> GunnarHj, downloading/installing thing without asking the user is poor taste ... or do you mean having update-manager prompting about that on first run? don't we have a such prompt on first login after installation? [09:54] <GunnarHj> seb128: Only on first run, and only if you install without internet. The issue is that some language packs (e.g. firefox) are silently uninstalled sometimes. So the idea is to ensure that everything is there. [09:55] <GunnarHj> seb128: I agree that prompting would be nicer, and in that case update-manager would be the place, I suppose. [09:56] <seb128> GunnarHj, the cases where they are uninstalled shouldn't happen if you use the graphical tools, it should rather hold on some package updates than uninstall [09:57] <GunnarHj> seb128: Wasn't aware of that distinction. OTOH, how do you prevent users from installing from terminal? [09:58] <seb128> GunnarHj, no we don't, but those who are technical enough to do that are responsible for what they are doing [10:01] <GunnarHj> seb128: You have to admin that uninstalling is nonintuitive behavior. I for one don't understand why it happens. [10:01] <GunnarHj> s/admin/admit/ [10:01] <seb128> GunnarHj, well, don't use dist-upgrade, just use "upgrade", it does the safe thing [10:02] <seb128> those issues also only happen in dev series [10:02] <seb128> non technical users run stable series [10:02] <seb128> so you have a biased view on who is impacted [10:03] <GunnarHj> seb128: Are you absolutely sure it only happens in dev series? [10:03] <seb128> GunnarHj, why would it happen on stable series? [10:03] <seb128> and how? [10:07] <GunnarHj> seb128: Don't know. Don't know. I have still seen it happen (I think). So have others. [10:07] <GunnarHj> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2014-November/006721.html [10:07] <GunnarHj> https://launchpad.net/bugs/1395273 [10:58] <GunnarHj> seb128: To conclude what we were talking about a few minutes ago: You don't encourage me to proceed with the idea to guard against absent language support packages along those lines. Is that so? [12:38] <seb128> GunnarHj, I don't think it's an important issue or hit lot of users, you could try to add some ui to e.g update-manager but then you might hit the reverse problem and annoy users who uninstalled language support for e.g firefox because they prefer english [13:20] <GunnarHj> seb128: I understand what you are saying. I might investigate a little more. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts! [13:20] <seb128> GunnarHj, yw! </quote> On 2014-11-24 12:21, Fòram na Gàidhlig wrote: > Users shouldn't need to go to Language Support or enter any commands > at all unless they want to change something themselves (rather than the > system silently changing it under them) As a first step, I think we should focus on *why* language support packages may be unsolicitedly uninstalled. We need to figure out under which circumstances it can happen, and submit a bug report which includes a reproducible use case. We don't have such a bug report yet, have we? >>> The explanation is that that's how the language pack system is >>> designed currently. Either you have English - all English - >>> installed or not. But some users are (for to me unknown reasons) >>> very picky about installing only what they need. > > I can get that - I was kind of bemused that I had to install all > Englishes, because my language doesn't have the coverage yet to be > included in the installer. One English would have done the job just as > nicely - I only needed it so I could pick my own language later, and > after the switch, to fill the gaps in incomplete translations, all I > really need is the basic "en" that's used as a basis for translation. Was there anything you couldn't do with your computer because you installed multiple English variants? I suppose not. Personally I don't see the problem here. When you use a Linux distro - any distro - you install a lot of things you don't need, but which at the same time don't hurt. > As explained above, I think the design for English is seriously broken, > and it's not really nice for English-speakers either - in the initial > install, they too get forced to install all Englishes, even if the > updater then drops this later. You mix two things here. Yes, there is only one set of language support packages per language, and some of the sets (English, Spanish, Portugese...) include translations and other stuff for more than one variant. Not a problem IMO. Then we think that language support packages are silently uninstalled sometimes. As already said above, I suggest that we focus on the latter. -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj -- ubuntu-translators mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
