ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Kyle Nitzsche <kyle.nitzsche@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/17/2014 06:54 AM, Christian Dywan wrote:
> On 2014-04-17 03:27, Rodney Dawes wrote:
>> On Wed, 2014-04-16 at 19:04 -0400, Kyle Nitzsche wrote:
>>> On 04/16/2014 01:11 PM, Martin Pitt wrote:
>>>
>>>>> And the convenience of lang packs would only be for things where we
>>>>>> are the upstream (and probably only things that are in the image
>>>>>> itself, rather than updated via clicks).
>>>> Yes, we agree (that's what I wrote as well). As I said, the langpack
>>>> concept makes a lot less sense on system images where it doesn't
>>>> matter which "package" the bit you update (a .mo file) came from.
>>>>
>>> Deb based language packs (for core stuff) do make sense when phone
>>> oem/service provider system images are created. Their rootfs gets just
>>> the languages they need (not all languages), saving disk. 
>> But the update story is horrible, because the only way to update is to
>> upgrade the entire OS image. As is the story for anyone who buys a phone
>> with those langauges, and needs a different language.
>>
>> We can do better than that.
> I can agree with that from personal experience.
>
> When you buy you get a set of languages. Maybe English + Spanish, maybe
> German + French + Italian, maybe Russian + Ucrainian + Polish + English.
> So you buy a phone, it has no s/German/Your tongue/. You find an
> inofficially provided image by some dude on the web. Reflash the phone.
> Run into funny side effects like oem/ operator features that don't work.
>
> Now, for me personally, I managed, but most people I know can't do this.
>
> It is worth noting Android has quite a number of preset languages making
> it very likely you find something you can at least read whether you're
> from America, Europe or Asia. In a sense they hide the problem because
> majority groups will be happy and everyone else won't get heard if they
> complain…
Just noting that our traditional deb based lang packs approach (for core stuff)
in the context of the monolithic system image enables:
* producing stock Ubuntu devices with as wide a set of languages as is wanted
* while also allowing custom phones/tablets to trim that down to the hand picked
languages they want and thereby freeing disk space

If we do not have the ability to add translations for core stuff (not including
click pkgs) beyond that baked into the image, then the pressure will be to add
as many languages into the stock image as possible. In my experience, OEMs are
often quite clear that their product does not need all those languages and they
choose to delete them for the disk space. Lang packs enable these options
without much fuss, it seems to me.

I look forward to hearing about how/whether we intend to support adding
translations for core stuff beyond that provided in the system image when it is
built. If we can do that, this part of the discussion is moot.

> Just my two cents,
> Christian
>