Frank Ludolph wrote: > Mike Gerdts wrote: >> On 9/7/07, Frank Ludolph <Frank.Ludolph at sun.com> wrote: >> >>> Dave Miner wrote: >>> >>>> One question, and one addition: >>>> >>>> >>>>> 1. Remove Installer language window. Installer will run in LiveCD >>>>> system language. >>>>> >>>> How are you expecting that the system language will be set? The live >>>> CD prompts for a keyboard layout while it's still in text mode since >>>> we can't change it during the X session, but otherwise nothing will >>>> prompt for the language, and I don't see a desktop application which >>>> would let me do it, either. >>>> >>> On a LiveCD the installer is just another app, and as such runs in the >>> same language as the desktop.This implies that the language question >>> should be asked during startup, perhaps just before the keyboard >>> question. Sanjay has said that due to space constraints there will only >>> be one language on a CD (meaning there will have to be 10 different >>> CDs). In this case it wouldn't be necessary to ask the language >>> question, but it may also have implications on the installer - what if >>> I'm using the English CD and want German language support? It could be >>> downloaded from the repository during the install, but if it can't and >>> must be manually downloaded after reboot, should we even be asking the >>> question? >>> >> >> It seems to me that the installer should assume that if the user knew >> enough of the language to get to start the installer, the installation >> can occur in that language. This implies that there wouldn't need to >> be a pre-installer language selection. > Agreed. By "startup" I was referring to CD bootup. The language question > would be asked during the startup prior to the appearance of the desktop > so that the desktop itself (menus, dialogs, etc) are in the language > specified by the user. The installer would run in the same language.
First, going back to your initial response, I don't think we've definitively concluded whether we'll have a CD per language, since we're still sorting out packages and sizes, but even if that was the case, what about DVD's where we obviously would have the option of multiple languages? We need to be able to ask, even if we don't. With respect to Mike's assertion that we can assume language knowledge based on the user getting the install running, that only works if we've actually had an explicit question during install, or we've got an implicit selection based on single-language media. I can get all sorts of things to run by randomly clicking icons on a desktop without understanding them, after all. So it seems we need to plan on asking a language question somewhere. Replacing the installer question with a general one is fine, but my original point is really that you need to specify where it will be asked and it needs to end up on someone's task list. It's not spec'ed or scheduled at this point. Dave
