Re: UI change of "Languge" selection in gdm2

[Chookij Vanatham <chookij mpkmail eng sun com>]

Thanks George for all the review.
I'll get back to you with the patch, particurly, 3-4 items based on
all your comments.

Chookij V.

> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 03:34:20PM -0800, Chookij Vanatham wrote:
> > 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)
> 
> I think 3-4 should be done slightly differently.  Instead of just setlocale
> for the whole slave, remember the language in the slave and only do setlocale
> to the users language when we're about to say something to the user.  Would
> be perhaps useful to have a 'language stack', so that you can do something
> like (in the slave)
> 
> gdm_push_user_language ()
> ... some code here ...
> gdm_pop_language ()
> 
> Say put this around the pam calls.  Those calls could however call some
> methods that require the system language, thus it would have to be a stack.
> 
> Perhaps this is not required, perhaps just setting and unsetting the system
> langauge around all gdm_info/error would be enough.
> 
> Also you have to make sure to set back to the system language when the login
> failed or the greeter is reset from the slave (do this in the slave).
> 
> > 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 ?
> 
> I think restarting the greeter on the fly after the user enters their login
> name would be incredibly annoying.  If this is not possible to do without
> restarting greeter (and it is not with the graphical greeter at least since
> geometry is managed very insanely there), then we shouldn't switch the
> language.  IMO at least.  Loading the greeter can be somewhat expensive,
> especially over the network.  On the other hand we could on the fly switch
> tha language in the slave, that way at least the slave messages (the actual
> questions the user answers) can come in translated.  Note that you need to
> make sure to get encodings right.  The greeter is all utf8 no matter what the
> encoding is and the slave is the encoding of the locale.  If the language of
> the slave will be different from the language of the greeter, the slave must
> somehow also give the greeter the locale it's working in.  If I remember
> correctly communication is done in system locale whatever that is and it's up
> to the greeter to make it utf8 (but I could be wrong, I'm not looking at the
> code right now)
> 
> George
> 
> -- 
> George <jirka 5z com>
>    Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest
>    tree in the forest... with... a herring!
>                        -- The Knights Who Say 'Ni'