Language chooser at login (comment from an upset ubuntu user)

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

I was testing oneiric alpha releases, found several problems with
keyboard maps and locale settings, tried to report them as bugs, and ran
against a wall of ignorance, probably errected by ubuntu/canonical. I
then came to bug #803858 and to this mailing list discussion.

Reading this discussion really upsets me.

Ubuntu once was a stable, reliable, usable, robust linux distribution.
But for about 1-2 years, ubuntu is degenerating and worsening, suffering
from a strategy to invent silly and ideological desktop design ideas.
What really shocks me is not just the loss of quality. It is the sheer
ignorance and arrogancy of the guys enforcing those questionable design
decisions.

Worst of all are the comments from Robert Ancell. It is more than
obvious that this guy has an awful anglo-americo-centric view of the
world, not knowing much about multilanguage environments, and rigorously
enforces his wrong assumptions.


@Robert: Just some of your statements from
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2011-July/003138.html
that appear arbitrary and taken from thin air:

    1. Users who set the system language at install/first boot time, and
    never change it (the vast majority)
    2. English as a second language users, who switch between their native
    language and English (this is a class of user I don't understand well).
    I think the reason for this is because the translations are not always
    good enough?  Is this a power user feature?


These are wrong assumptions. It shows that you do not really know much
about language and locale settings. Maybe not the best base for such
important design decisions.

    And I'd expect these users to use their preferred language and not need
    to change it at all.  We need to work out what "the group that
    appreciate an opportunity to change language at login" are trying to
    achieve.  The multi-lingual users I've talked to do not change their
    language settings frequently.


Sorry to say that, but this is nonsense. This is the point of view of a
one-languaged user, demanding the rest of the world to act exactly like
him, who obviously has never changed between different languages.


I'll explain just some of the reasons why language and keyboard options
need to remain in the login screen:

   1. It is wrong (and naive) to assume, that users once choose their
      "preferred language" and then never change it. The preferred
      language is not a static value. It depends on the context. E.g.
      when writing software, when communicating with english speaking
      users (like I am doing right now), when travelling or working in a
      country with english language, or when debugging software or
      reading manuals, a user might prefer the english language. There
      is almost no chance to google comments for bugs and errors if you
      enter the german, french, italian, chinese translation of error
      messages. If you work with a german locale, debugging is pointless
      in many cases, since you need the english messages.

      Furthermore and beyond computers, I sometimes change my prefered
      language.


   2. It is not just a matter of the personal language preferences. Many
      programs behave differently depending on the locale settings. E.g.
      you cannot use OpenOffice/LibreOffice with the wrong locale,
      because with english locale it does not show dates, currencies,
      numbers properly with the wrong locale. So if writing for german
      purposes I need a german locale. When writing for english
      purposes, I need the english locale.

      Same with spell checking.

      Assuming that a user once and finally chooses his prefered
      language is nonsense.


   3. As a consultant, I have to change between the language the
      customer uses to have his problems and bugs, and the language used
      by the distribution/provider/...   E.g. if a german user complains
      about a problem, and the distributor expects english bug reports
      (e.g. ubuntu), I have to change between settings periodically.


   4. It might surprise you, but this even happens with keyboards. When
      writing in german, you need a german keyboard with characters like
      öäü.

      On the other hand, writing software is much easier with a us
      keyboard, because characters like {}[] are difficult to reach on
      german keyboards. And people often travelling between countries,
      who are forced to use US keyboards in other countries, usually
      hate to use different keyboards. Many of my friends and collegues
      therefore /sometimes/ use US keyboards, even when in Germany. But
      not all the time.

   5. Are you aware that there are at least three different settings for
      german? (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, there are sometimes even
      more countries, ISO-8859-1 or UTF encoding, old or new
      spelling,...) Even if one conforms to your assumption to never
      change his preferred language, he still might need to change
      between the different flavours.

      This is not america, where there is just english, ASCII, and one
      spelling.

   6. Logging in, and out, and in again just to change the locale
      settings is nonsense. Especially since Ubuntu has jammed its
      desktops so much that it takes them significant time to come up.

   7. Changing the locale in the desktop is unlogical. How should one
      find the program to change the locale if he doesn't understand the
      language of the menues?

   8. Changing the locale in the desktop is complicted, because it works
      differently (if at all) for the different desktops.

   9. Not all people are using "desktops". Some are still using the old
      fashioned X11 session with xsession and a plain old window manager.

  10. Changing the locale in the desktop does not work.

      Usually scripts like ~/.profile and ~/.xsession are run (although
      I am not sure how these are executed by ubuntu right now). Usually
      these scripts are run in processes that are not children of the
      desktop process and thus do not inherit the locale settings from
      the desktop. Therefore, setting the locale in the desktop is just
      incomplete.

  11. It might surprise you even more, but in many cases I even set all
      these LC_... variables to different values, e.g. to use english
      messages with german date and number formats, while changing the
      time zone frequently to where I am when travelling around or
      beeing on a business trip.




Therefore the options to be chosen in the login screen should not only
be kept, but even extended:

    * Locale setting
    * Keyboard map
    * Time Zone


So these design decisions to remove all that options from the login
screen are just wrong.

For a long time I considered Ubuntu/Canonical as the savior of Linux in
common and Debian in particular. But for about 1-2 years now, I do
consider Ubuntu/Canonical more as a threat, since it enforces more and
more of crappy desktops.


regards
Hadmut




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