On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 02:58:47PM -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Package: dictionaries-common
> Version: 1.10.5
> Severity: minor
> Justification: cosmetic
>
> Hi,
>
> In today's upgrade, I was prompted:
>
> ??????????????????????????????????????? Dictionaries-common: Ispell
> dictionary ????????????????????????????????????????????????
> ??? Because more than one ispell dictionary will be available in your ???
> ??? system, please select the one you'd like applications to use by ???
> ??? default. ???
> ??? ???
> ??? You can change the default ispell dictionary at any time by ???
> ??? running "select-default-ispell". ???
> ??? ???
> ??? System's default ispell dictionary: ???
> ??? ???
> ??? american (American English - medium) ???
> ??? british (British English) ???
> ??? Manual symlinks setting ???
You noticed this because of a change in experimental iamerican string. Was
"american (American English)" and changed to
"american (American English - medium)", and change triggered debconf
question. This has now been reverted and is pending of upload, so you
will see the question again when upgrading to the new experimental, but
will not be shown for sid upgrades.
> I never explicitly chose to install ispell or dictionaries-common, and
> nowadays I have a hard time keeping track of ispell, aspell, and
> hunspell dictionaries and which programs use which. Maybe this could
> give some advice in that direction? Is this asking me what dictionary
> to use with the "ispell" command and some text editors that might
> invoke it, or is the effect wider than that? In other words, is there
> any easy way to see which applications will respect this setting?
Only those that use ispell with no explicit dictionary setting and Emacs.
> "Because more than one ispell dictionary will be available" does not
> seem like a relevant thing to say, now that multiple ispell
> dictionaries seems to be the default.
>
> What does "American English - medium" mean? Perhaps the prompt could
> explain it?
These are strings provided by different dictionaries. They are used as keys
for debconf questions and which of them appear depend on installed
dictionaries, so there is no possibility of documenting all at debconf text
more that what the string itself says.
> What does "Manual symlinks setting" mean? Maybe the prompt could
> explain what symlink is being set, or which README file explains this
> in more detail?
This is provided by dictionaries-common and means "I will set default
symlinks myself. Honour them". This can indeed be explained better.
> The alternate screen shows
>
> [ispell,dc_debconf_select] error: [american (American English)] does
> not correspond to any package
>
> Is that a bug?
That is caused by the string mismatch, default selection was previously
"american (American English)" and with the change is no longer available
because was changed to "american (American English - medium)". Fix is now
pending of upload, see http://bugs.debian.org/619651.
I am currently playing with attached patch, suggestions welcome.
Thanks for your feedback,
--
Agustin
diff --git a/debian/dictionaries-common.templates b/debian/dictionaries-common.templates
index a0e80cc..f5f0a7a 100644
--- a/debian/dictionaries-common.templates
+++ b/debian/dictionaries-common.templates
@@ -24,8 +24,11 @@ Type: select
Choices-C: ${choices}, Manual symlinks setting
__Choices: ${echoices}, Manual symlinks setting
_Description: System's default ispell dictionary:
- Because more than one ispell dictionary will be available in your system,
- please select the one you'd like applications to use by default.
+ When no specific dictionary is selected, ispell will choose its default
+ by using "/usr/lib/default.{aff,hash}" links. Selected dictionary will
+ be used for default symlink and as global emacs default when ispell is
+ used. Use "Manual symlinks setting" if you want to handle symlinks
+ yourself. No global emacs default for ispell in that case.
.
You can change the default ispell dictionary at any time by running
"select-default-ispell".
@@ -35,8 +38,9 @@ Type: select
Choices-C: ${choices}, Manual symlinks setting
__Choices: ${echoices}, Manual symlinks setting
_Description: System's default wordlist:
- Because more than one wordlist will be available in your system, please
- select the one you'd like applications to use by default.
+ Selected wordlist will be used as "/usr/share/dict/words" by linking
+ to it. Use "Manual symlinks setting" if you want to handle that symlink
+ yourself.
.
You can change the default wordlist at any time by running
"select-default-wordlist".
