[mplayer-dev-eng] install localized manpages

[Dan Christiansen]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 09:12 AM, Dominik Mierzejewski 
wrote:

> All Linux boxen I've had access to had those directories. Granted, I've
> never used any distro without a decent package management system. I've 
> seen
> one Solaris box without any localized manpages. I, personally, think
> that the best solution is to install the English man and any specified
> with --language (i.e. --language=en,de,pl). Those, who want all should 
> be
> able to specify --language=all.

I agree. Actually, I have yet to here a single argument _against_ this 
way. Seems intuitive and straightforward to me.

> RPM behaviour, for example, is different
> (at least on my RH box). It installs all translated files unless I 
> specify
> appropriate values in certain macros.

Remember that MPlayer compiles and runs on many other operating systems 
than GNU/Linux. (*BSD, Darwin, Windows, you mention Solaris and 
probably many more...) On Darwin, the LINGUAS variable isn't referenced 
anywhere in the (all English) system man files, and out of the 3.243 
man pages I've installed with Fink (Darwin port of apt-get/dpkg), only 
one, Lynx, mentions it. There are several references to LANG in the 
system man pages. Also, out of 3.243 man pages in Fink, 74 are in 
another language than English. All system man pages are in English. I 
have both English and Danish installed although I personally use 
English everywhere. Neither LINGUAS, LANG nor LC_MESSAGES are set, 
implicating that the default locale should be used.

Assuming that the above mentioned setup means you should install 20 man 
pages in various languages is clearly broken behaviour.

If you insist on installing 20 messages, please make it behave 
differently on Darwin. The most reasonable thing to me seems to be to 
use LANG rather than some other, random variable, and to assume that 
the absence of LANG means to use the default language. The few users 
who need more man pages can request them with the  --language switch 
Dominik and many others mention.

This isn't really about man pages, it's about MPlayer being good 
software. Good software shouldn't install random files in random 
places...

- Dan Christiansen