[Dict-common-dev] po-debconf and the dictionaries-common policy

[Agustin Martin Domingo]

Denis Barbier wrote:
>=20
> I filed bugs.debian.org/211751 and read the dictionaries-common policy,=

> and now I get the feeling that po-debconf is misused when building
> *spell related packages.  As I am not familiar with it, could someone
> tell me if and when this usage was discussed, in order for me to better=

> understand the rationale behind current implementation?
> I am going to dig into maintainer scripts internals, and will send furt=
her
> thoughts later.

Hi, Denis,

Taking a look into 211751 and getting some text from there. Some=20
description of the system follows,

There are two kind of templates in dictionaries-common, on the one side=20
package templates for the system, e.g. for an ispell dictionary=20
(s/#PACKAGE#/package name/, s/#LANGUAGES#/languages provided/)

Template: shared/packages-ispell
Type: text
Description:

Template: #PACKAGE#/languages
Type: text
Default: #LANGUAGES#
Description:

> In fact there are 2 issues, dictionary names must not be localized
> because it is not supported (hence this BR)

For #LANGUAGES# we use some sort of poor man localization, that is,=20
having a first part in the language and encoding (we should move this to =

utf8) desired by maintainer, and a second one in english, e.g.

bokm=C3=A5l (Bokmal Norwegian)

This way, sysadmins always have the english reference and depending on=20
the language name and encoding used they will also see the localized=20
name, although names for other languages might display strange=20
characters. These are the choices to be displayed and should not be a=20
problem for debconf, and po-debconf is not intended at all for use in=20
these templates.

On the other hand, there are package local templates, that need to be=20
used in conjunction with above package templates for the system, e.g.=20
{i,w}norwegian asking which will be the default setting for norwegian,=20
bokmal or nynorsk, or ipolish displaying a note about hash rebuild.=20
These can and should be localized and are the templates for which=20
po-debconf is intended in the system. These are what the policy document =

refers to as additional templates.

--=20
Agustin