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

[Sebastien Bacher]

On mer., 2011-08-24 at 15:35 +0200, Hadmut Danisch wrote:
> 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.

Thank you for your interest but confrontational behaviour based on
subjective facts doesn't usually lead to useful discussions...

>  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. 

Could you read http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct those are not the
basis for a constructive discussion. Just for the record most of the
desktop team people are non english speakers and contributed to the
discussions


>         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. 

Rather than saying they are wrong could you argument on why you think
they are wrong? When and why do you switch locales? It seems most non
english users just run using their own locale and doesn't switch over
what english user do.

>         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. 

Why do you need to switch languages? Don't you have a prefered one you
use most of the time?

> 
> 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. 

What you suggest is that users need to change their "location" and
"default dictionnary" there, not the langage used for the ui of the
softwares. If you do like changing default languages every now and then
you can probably do it fine from the language selector, log out and log
in again, it's basically not harder than doing it on the login screen.

>         
>      1. 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.

The text editor let you pick the format and dictionary. What you need
there is rather a way to start one application in a specific context.
But for what is worth lot of people write english text under a german
session, it's easy enough to switch dynamically keyboard layouts and
dictionaries.

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

Your arguments explain why people need to change some of their settings,
not why that needs to happen on the login screen itself directly. Note
that GNOME dropped the language selector from gdm as well.