Localisation needs to be improved

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 04:18 +0200, Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> Pavel Shevchuk wrote:
> > You chose Australia on timezone selection screen.
> > 
> > Anaconda can't handle such specific needs without making GUI
> > obfuscated, and it works OK for most users already.
> > 

Oh great.  X seems to work for most people, so let's just leave it at
that.  It will make Ajax's work a lot easier.  For that matter, the
kernel seems to work for most people so let's just leave it at that.
etc.

> True, anaconda may not be able to handle it without obfuscating the GUI, 
> and I don't think it's something that needs to be done during the 
> installation or even during firstboot.

Actually, while there needs to be tools to adjust it afterwards, this is
most definitely something anaconda should be getting right.

You're average (non-advanced) users they are highly unlikely to know
that this can be managed some other way and will most likely just curse
and groan their way through each change they have to make at the
applications level to get it right.

As an example, I have to change the paper settings in a number of places
in cups so that it knows I use A4 paper.  Add to this that evince
doesn't honor this, so I have to tell it that I'm printing A4 otherwise
every thing is scaled down just a little.  OOo also needs to be told
about my A4 habit because it doesn't seem to honor cup's settings
either.  And that's just a start.

Temperatures set to Fahrenheit.  Measurements in inches, feet and yards.

Getting this right at the install reaches deeply into the entire user
experience, and should be done right at the install.  After all, once I
customize all these settings, a change to system-config-locale is
unlikely to see these settings changing accordingly.

> > Advanced users can customize locale manually. Casual users want less
> > buttons and get work done faster. I vote for leaving it as is.

I don't know what to say about this argument.  You seem to be arguing
that it's okay that we get this wrong, because advanced users can work
around it.

Besides, while I'm not sure I'm an advanced user, I also don't want to
either have to redo this every six months (with each release of fedora)
or ignore something that's broken just because it can fix it easily and
ignore how much it might inconvenience other less advanced users.

I say it should be fixed.


R.
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"