[mplayer-dev-eng] install localized manpages +

[Andreas Hess]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 03:37:20PM +0100, Rüdiger Kuhlmann wrote:
> 
> >--[Andreas Hess]--<jaska at gmx.net>
> > As a lot of people stated in this thread, there is no case where you
> > might need polish manpages, if you don't speak polish.
> 
> Well, only you stated _that_ - it's wrong: pretty much any time you compile
> it for not only your own personal when you can't guerantee that no Polish
> etc. person might need that.

Please see below.

[...]

> Please name me one program with included man pages that doesn't install all
> of them by default, but offers a configure option to install some/all of
> them.

Every program that supports --enable-nls/--disable-nls.  And according to
_you_ (not me) every program that supports $LINGUAS.

[...]

> > If this is the proper way, maybe we should change mplayer to this
> > behaviour.
> 
> Good idea. Your explaination of how these ways of giving configure options
> fundamentally differ is still missing. [...]

Informatics for beginners:  One thing is called _environment_ variable,
it's purpose is clearly to define some things, that are useful for
your whole _environment_, not special programs.  The other thing is
called option, and is always used by one program, and therefor useful
for configuring program specific things.

> Go on trolling.

I never would take away your part.

[...]

> I didn't say someone who requests nothing should get everything. I said
> someone who doesn't make a request should get everything, because that's the
> standard way for good reasons.

Huh?  Whose standard way?  Where?

> Y'know, the "I'm not listening" trick doesn't work neither on me nor on
> public mailing lists in general. The "I don't read your arguments at all"
> trick neither.

For you it's obviously working pretty well.  Please read the following
statements, that you haven't read at all.  They sum it up pretty well,
and much better I ever could do.


D Richard Felker III:

"So do you, bu not cluttering their systems with crap. If every other
localized piece of software I installed knows how to properly install
man pages, then mplayer should too."


Tobias Diedrich:

"And for the question which manpages to install, why not use the
configure --language option for that?
So the default would still be "just english" or maybe one could change
configure to figure it out based on what locale says about LC_MESSAGES.
If a package maintainer or user wishes to include more, he could add
--languages="en de fr hu it pl ru zh" ."

"Default case for users is "I want my Lanugage to be installed or english
if its not available" IMHO. Let this be overrideable by configure
--language="ab bc de fg_FG fg_GF" and --language=all and everyone should
be happy. :-)"

"Having to set an environment variable for one program just sucks IMHO.
Of course if LINGUAS is set that should probably honored if --language
was not used."


Colin Leroy:

"
> LINGUAS="" ./configure .....

this suck !"

"Why would people have to export largely unused environment variables for
such things ? if LINGUAS isn't defined the best that should be done is
installing the en manpage. Imho of course."


Dan Christiansen:

"It seems to me that the absence of either LINGUAS or LANG indicates
that the system isn't localised."

"The logical thing to do on a non-localised system is not to localise."

"Please, don't install all sorts of language files into all sorts of
places as default. The only thing you will succeed in is annoying
everyone, since hardly anyone speaks every single languages you support."

"The Right Thing would be to have it install English only as default,
with an option to install other languages. Perhaps the "--language=xx"
switch combined with some sort of auto detection."

"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"

"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..."

"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"

"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."

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

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


Arpi:

"but if it will try to install i'll patch the shit out"


Diego Biurrun:

"I'm going to speak up now and say that I am against all man pages being
installed by default."


Dominik Mierzejewski:

"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."