Hi George, Bob, Jerry,
Thanks for all comment/suggestion.
Yes, definitely, "language selection" for users will need to be handled
inside the session and I'd love to hear how it should be implemented,
particurly, in the way that having common place (ex: user profile file,
~/.dmrc, ...etc) to keep this language information which can be shared
among various layers of software, ex: Gnome, Mozilla, Evolution,
OpenOffice... etc. I think, it will be very helpful for more technical
detail of the direction.
Another issue (as mentioned by Bob) I also like to hear more in detail
is "connectivity manager" layer which is for larger systems with
lots of shared users (users don't have their assigned terminals,
ex: Sun Ray Server Software,..etc) in the way that what we need to
have things changed in gdm2. And, seems like this would also be a reason
why, perhaps, "a sane language-on-the-fly" need to be fixed in gdm2.
So right now, first thing I'm really focusing on is delivering
"a sane language-on-the-fly" PATCH in the following ways.
1) MINIMAL change to gdm's user interface
There is NO NEED to seperate langauge option between greeter
and users's session.
2) NO NEED for persistent-greeter-language change
3) Some text from the slave (including pam) will need to be
in the same/new langauge users select.
(I already did this by having "slave process" change its locale
to the new one: setlocale (LC_ALL, <new language>): then, some
message: ex: "Password" will be displayed in new language).
4) Text that goes to the syslog needs to be in system language
which is the language when system boots up.
(I'll figure this out)
Please let me know if above 1-4 items are enough for
a sane language-on-the-fly patch.
Please help me clearify the right behavior when users select option "Last"
langauge. What langauge we should have "greeter" to be restarted on the fly ?
Please also help me review if we should have additional UI change
for users to be able to select which character set they want to use
in their langauge within their sessions. If so, please review if
"session langauge" tab in gdmsetup makes sense to have sys-admin
to be able to change which character set should be the default one
for particurlar langauge. (Just in case, I attached some previous
snapshots about this character set stuff).
Currently, gdm is able to provide list of various charsets
for one particular language by adding the message (Charset name)
after the langauge name (please see snapshots: gdm_various_charsets.rs.gz
for Chinese langauge as an example) but I have got the request that users
don't like long list of the same langauge in many choices.
Thanks a lot and appreciated for all comment.
Chookij V.
> On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 07:00:36PM -0800, Jerry Wall wrote:
> > In our shared server environments, we have found that having the
> > user select their greeter language is beneficial. Inside Sun, we have
> > some servers that support populations of users with multiple languages
> > in real production. Even in the computer industry where English literacy
> > is very common, we feel that delivering all the user experience in native
> > languages is very important. This is one of the areas that really generates
> > a large amount of emotion since language is a significant portion of
> > people's cultural identities.
>
> Yes but there is always a question of how far do you go. All in all, the
> user will select their language really only once (thus my reasoning for this
> to be best handled by gnome-session). Plus it is impossible to "greet"
> people that you don't know the language of unless you'd automatically FIRST
> ask the language before the username. There's always a chicken and egg
> problem. And asking for a language before each login would be annoying for
> 99.9% of users.
>
> Even if you on the fly change the language of the greeter, the user still
> has to know how to change the language, so they'll have to know what button
> to press to do that anyway. So no matter what you have to deal with a LITTLE
> bit of the "System" language (whatever that is set to) in any case.
>
> IMO the user interface of gdm should be as minimal as possible. It should be
> minimal enough such that this is not a problem. Any sort of session setup or
> any such nonsense is best handled inside the session where we already know
> your preferences.
>
> This is not just language, but say even accessibility, left handed vs. right
> handed mouse (we handle that with a hack nowdays) etc... So if there is less
> actual user (non-administrator) interface to deal with on the login screen,
> the better we are off.
>
> > I do grant the denial of service issue can be real, getting a greeter
> > in Russian, Arabic or some other language can be quite confusing
> > especially if you do not have the greeter menu locations memorized.
> > The best defence that we have come up with is to reap idle sessions
> > that have been disconnected.
>
> And if someone makes a nice patch for that I'll be very happy to apply this.
> Same goes for a sane language-on-the-fly setting patch, that is, one that
> doesn't add any more crack then we've already got.
>
> :)
>
> George
>
> --
> George <jirka 5z com>
> Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior
> to all others because you were born in it.
> -- George Bernard Shaw
>
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