[mplayer-dev-eng] install localized manpages +

[Dan Christiansen]

On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 08:19 PM, Rüdiger Kuhlmann wrote:

[snip]
> The majority of the people is always silent. Installing man pages of
> neglectible size won't harm anyone. There are just a few morons like 
> you who
> make a fuss about it because they can't be bothered to configure it
> properly.

Calling your opponent a moron does not make your point more valid. Yes, 
the majority is silent. No, that does not automatically mean they agree 
with you.

>>> If you don't want translated stuff, just set that
>>> environment variable once, and you'll be fine.
>> But once again why? Other programs don't force me
>
> Bobody forces you. Stop bitching about a few kB, and everything is 
> fine.

It's not the few kilobytes that's the problem; it's the principle. It's 
a few kilobytes of random data today, several megabytes tomorrow...

>> And I definitely wouldn't be happy, if every program forces me to set
>> unneeded environment variables.
>
> It's part of the configuration... tell configure what you want.

But as Andreas said, it would be nice to be able to do it in a standard 
way. For instance using the --language argument. The fact that mplayer 
can only have one language hardcoded into it is easily handled; simply 
hardcode the first language.

[snip]
>> 1) IMHO most mplayer users need just one manpage and don't want to 
>> have
>>    as much translation as possible.
>
> Most. If you have a multi-user system, you'll alienate those that 
> don't.
> Your assertion can only be true for those that compile it on their 
> home box.

Does it not seem fair to make the most commonly used setting the 
default? If people have a multi-user system where localisation is 
important, they would probably have a setup where it could be easily 
detected, using LINGUAS, LANG, etc. If people don't care about 
localisation, the setup

>> 2) I see no point in respecting the will of some translation freaks, 
>> who
>>    can't live with less than 20 translated manpages, over the will of 
>> the
>>    simple user, who is happy with just one manpage.
>
> I'm not a translation freak by any means. Ridiculing translated man 
> pages
> doesn't really increase your credibility.

Forcing 20 man pages on users is ridiculing them. I those pages were 
written to help, not to annoy. And even if you could disable the 20 man 
pages with the very unintuitive LINGUAS variable, people would probably 
only realise this _after_ running make install...

>> 3) No, it isn't default to want all translations. _That_ sucks.
>
> It is default to install those translations that are requested, and if 
> none
> is requested, then all of them. If you don't want to tell your 
> configure
> that you want only one, then don't bitch.

It is not default to have $LINGUAS set. You're being very 
GNU/Linux-centric here - please remember that MPlayer is run on many 
other operating systems.

For instance, on Darwin/Mac OS X $LINGUAS isn't set, and it isn't 
default to install every single language which the OS supports. IIRC, 
it defaults to English and a few other commonly used

[snip]
>>> This is the standard way, the way to go. If you don't like that, set 
>>> your
>>> LINUGAS to empty, and you'll be fine. Or remove those installed 
>>> directories.
>> Once again, if that's the way to go, why is mplayer the only program 
>> that
>
> It's not the only program. Every program using gettext and autoconf for
> configuration works this way, except for the translations and not the 
> man
> pages.

Every program that uses gettext has very easy and straightforward 
options to disable it. Plus, in the absence of gettext, they do not 
default to installing every single language.

>> forces me to set a bogus environment variable to nothing?
>
> Again, it doesn't force you to anything. If you want something 
> special, you
> have to do work for it.

It does force you to set a "bogus environment variable". Normally, you 
have to request a feature if it isn't used by the vast majority, but 
here, you have to explicitly tell configure (in a rather odd way) that 
you don't want Russian man pages.

JPEG is different, it has no side effects other than the added 1k of 
space. It does not put files in your man directory, or anywhere else 
for that matter...

[snip]
>> And BTW, if you want to have a look for other programs don't doing 
>> it, look
>> at a lot of programs besides xine.
>
> I'm doing that. Just looking at a totally bogus, mis-created program 
> called
> gcc-3.2 and doing a "grep -r LINGUA .". The hits I get are probably 
> all just
> hallucinations.

Are you sure it defaults to installing every single language it 
supports if the system environment does not support localisation? I.e. 
when LINGUA isn't set.

[snip]

- Dan