-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2003-10-29 10:43, Konstantinos Margaritis wrote: > [Please forgive me for cc'ing to all these addresses, but as you will > see I had no choice] > > Hi, > First, I would like to announce that Debian as been chosen by the > Greek Government as the official linux distribution, to be > used/proposed in schools, the public sector and perhaps SMEs.
for use in schools you should take a look at Skolelinux a custom debian for schools (http://developer.skolelinux.no), also Skolelinux takes care of system-wide locale setup. > Since I am the only developer in this country I took the role of > organizing the process of localizing/organizing the existing > localization process in order to have a proper and usable system > translated in greek. To add a new language to Skolelinux follow the instructions on http:// i18n.skolelinux.no/new-language.html (couple of hours work) - -> this will take care of all setup for locale (the actual translations are a different mather) > The goal is this: Use the existing Debian base (NO fork of a new > distro) but commit the necessary changes (translations, etc) back to > Debian in a way that enriches the distribution and helps the > situation of localizations for other languages as well. Skolelinux merges everything back into Debian (if at all possible) > However, due to the nature of the greek language (and other > languages that do not use the latin alphabet, eg cyrillic), some > further changes have to be made to ensure that the system is ready > for use after the installation. For example, since it will be used in > schools by young students, we want to avoid telling them to edit > configuration files of X to enable writing in greek. solved in Skolelinux > So, we have to automate the process of the localization based on > the configured locale of the system. The main targets are: console > keymap, X, KDE, GNOME. That is, after installation of these packages, > if the locale is set appropriately (LANG=el_GR), they should be > automatically configured to support the greek language (reading & > writing). > I have come to the following alternatives: > > * Modify the existing postinst scripts of the base packages affected > (console-tools, kdebase, gnome-core (?), xserver-xfree86 ) to detect > the presense of the greek locale and present the user with a question > to configure the localization (keyboard, etc). Not my favourite > method. > * Create a metapackage (autolocale) that depends on all the above > packages and automatically configure the localization settings. > Actually this might be used by other languages, there's nothing in > the process that excludes automation of the localization process for > eg. cyrillic or japanese. > This should detect the locale and present the user with questions > like: > "The el_GR locale setting has been detected, would you like to enable > support for greek keyboards for the console/X/KDE/GNOME?" > I believe the second option would be better but in this case there is > the case of actually installing the package, ie declaring as one of > the base (?) packages for the installation. And what happens if > someone does not want to install gnome or KDE or even X, but would > like support for the console? Multiple autolocale packages? Dynamic > autolocale dependencies? Suggesting/Recommending instead of depending > the other packages? > > I would appreciate some feedback esp from the maintainers of the > packages affected. - -- Cheers, cobaco /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign \ / No proprietary formats in attachments without request ÂX  i.e. *NO* WORD, POWERPOINT or EXCEL documents / \ Respect Open Standards   http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html   http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/n8PM5ihPJ4ZiSrsRAvy6AJ9C8wrWoOlbU5U4XwcMp6fhiVDEtACePnef xYyD+BSjmp2T4JvXgXGDQJg= =MkCa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
