[Fwd: Re: Firefox updates language packs]

[Chris Rouch]

On 2/6/07, Peter Gordon <peter at thecodergeek.com> wrote:
> [Forwarding Chris's reply, since he is not subscribed. ]
>
> Thanks for the explanation, Chris!
> --
> Peter Gordon (codergeek42) / FSF Associate Member #5015
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Christopher Ailllon <caillon at redhat.com>
> To: For users of Fedora <fedora-list at redhat.com>, peter at thecodergeek.com
> Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:21:54 -0500
> Subject: Re: Firefox updates language packs
> Peter Gordon wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 00:05 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
> >> Every time a Firefox update is issued, I end up with a ton of language packs
> >> under my "Extensions".  As I use none of them, and they occupy extra memory
> >> and make Firefox take longer to load, I load Firefox as root and delete them
> >> all, one at a time.
> >>
> >
> > The best solution here would probably be to split each langpack into a
> > subpackage appropriate to the selection of language support at install
> > time. (E.g., selecting the "Spanish Support" would install the
> > firefox-langpack-es package; and "Danish Support," the
> > firefox-langpack-dk package in a similar fashion, et al.)
>
> The installer doesn't pick out packages per language.  Pick a random
> package, such as file-roller or gnome-terminal or NetworkManager and run
> "rpm -ql file-roller | grep locale" -- you'll see a bunch of other
> languages you don't use.  All the language thing does is select the
> default language we should use on the system.
>
> The Fedora rule of thumb is that switching languages should be as easy
> as changing your LANG environment variable.
>
> I'm looking into better solutions, such as speeding up the lang
> registration, but for now, this is the way things go.

This isn't universally true, kde for example seems to have separate
language packs. And if they were a hidden part of firefox (in the
sense that the examples you give are all hidden) then probably no-one
would much care about them. But they overwhelm the extensions list
*and* cannot be removed by the end user within firefox. There has to
be a better way.

Chris