[gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Masatomo Nakano]

Hi all

I suggest that we stop using 'cjk' USE flag, which is to support
Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and we add new flags(lang_cn,lang_ja,lang_kr,....,m17n).
There are two reasons for this.

1. USE flag related to countries is only 'cjk' at the moment. But we
   need other country flag(ex. Russia).

2. It is impossible to apply 1USE flag among two or more
   countries because most of localization patches are conflict each other.
  (ex. Japanese and Russian patches are conflicting in
   media-sound/xmms-1.2.7-r20. Therefore if you set USE='cjk', you'll
   fail emerge it.)

Any ideas/comments?

Thanks,
Masatomo Nakano

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Weeve]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Masatomo Nakano wrote:

> Hi all
> 
> I suggest that we stop using 'cjk' USE flag, which is to support
> Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and we add new flags(lang_cn,lang_ja,lang_kr,....,m17n).
> There are two reasons for this.
> 
> 1. USE flag related to countries is only 'cjk' at the moment. But we
>    need other country flag(ex. Russia).
> 
> 2. It is impossible to apply 1USE flag among two or more
>    countries because most of localization patches are conflict each other.
>   (ex. Japanese and Russian patches are conflicting in
>    media-sound/xmms-1.2.7-r20. Therefore if you set USE='cjk', you'll
>    fail emerge it.)
> 
> Any ideas/comments?

Here's an idea for a solution to this and other lang problems

1) Make a use flag "lang" to hangle non-english languages
2) Make a variable LANG (in make.conf or rc.conf) and set it equal to the
   language wanted.

Then when an ebuild with the lang flag is called, it'll pick up which 
language from the config file and install the proper language.


Dunno how feasable this is, but it seems like a good idea to me :)


-- 
Weeve
Gentoo/Sparc Team Lead

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 15:49:20 -0400 (EDT)
Weeve <weeve@gentoo.org> wrote:

> 2) Make a variable LANG (in make.conf or rc.conf) and set it equal to
> the language wanted.

I see this variable more as a list of languages (other than
english which would be default), by order of preference. 

It would be useful for several things:
 - as you've said, it would make possible to apply language-specific
patches
 - some ebuilds could also have language-specific dependencies, like the
i18n packages for kde (we could also add "app-i18n/manpages-lang" as a
conditional dependency to "sys-apps/man-pages", etc.)
 - it would also be a more explicit way to choose the language at
compile time for packages such as openoffice
 - it would allow ebuild "einfo" internationalisation

The problem is that a new bash function should be provided by ebuild.sh
to easily make some "switch to the best matching language" case-like
constructs in ebuilds, but I don't think it is that difficult.

-- 
TGL.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Svyatogor]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 20:36:14 +0100
"Masatomo Nakano" <nakano@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hi all
> 
> I suggest that we stop using 'cjk' USE flag, which is to support
> Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and we add new
> flags(lang_cn,lang_ja,lang_kr,....,m17n). There are two reasons for this.
> 
> 1. USE flag related to countries is only 'cjk' at the moment. But we
>    need other country flag(ex. Russia).
> 
> 2. It is impossible to apply 1USE flag among two or more
>    countries because most of localization patches are conflict each other.
>   (ex. Japanese and Russian patches are conflicting in
>    media-sound/xmms-1.2.7-r20. Therefore if you set USE='cjk', you'll
>    fail emerge it.)

Great idea! I was thinking of something simialr recently, when I had a patch for
one program, which is mainly important for russian users. It would be great to
have the whole bunch of use flags of the form LANG_{Lang_Code}. 

Conserning the suggestion to have a var in /etc/make.conf - I don't really like,
cause users might want to have use flags for more than one language, as long as
they don't conflict.

-- 
Sergey Kuleshov <svyatogor@gentoo.org>
Let the Force be with us!

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Masatomo Nakano]

Hi

> > 2) Make a variable LANG (in make.conf or rc.conf) and set it equal to
> > the language wanted.
> 
> I see this variable more as a list of languages (other than
> english which would be default), by order of preference. 
> 
> It would be useful for several things:
>  - as you've said, it would make possible to apply language-specific
> patches
>  - some ebuilds could also have language-specific dependencies, like the
> i18n packages for kde (we could also add "app-i18n/manpages-lang" as a
> conditional dependency to "sys-apps/man-pages", etc.)
>  - it would also be a more explicit way to choose the language at
> compile time for packages such as openoffice
>  - it would allow ebuild "einfo" internationalisation
> 
> The problem is that a new bash function should be provided by ebuild.sh
> to easily make some "switch to the best matching language" case-like
> constructs in ebuilds, but I don't think it is that difficult.

It's a nice idea but it's other issue because the suggestion I emailed
is not that we'll be able to select language for i18n applications.

We should think 'localization issue(enable to use one language)' and
'selection language for i18n applications' separately.

Thanks,
Masatomo Nakano

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Alastair Tse]

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On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 20:36, Masatomo Nakano wrote:
> I suggest that we stop using 'cjk' USE flag, which is to support
> Chinese/Japanese/Korean, and we add new flags(lang_cn,lang_ja,lang_kr,....,m17n).

It would probably be lang_zh for chinese, to match the locale definition
in glibc. I've got a few questions:

1. What is the difference between m17n (multilingualisation) and i18n
(internationalisation)? Maybe we should use i18n instead of m17n since
it seems more widely used, especially if it means the same thing.

2. If it is only chinese, japanese and korean, maybe we should just use
zh, ja, kr as the USE flags. We have /usr/portage/use.desc to give it
the right description. Is there a reason to have the "lang_" prefix in
the USE flag?

> There are two reasons for this.
> 
> 1. USE flag related to countries is only 'cjk' at the moment. But we
>    need other country flag(ex. Russia).
> 
> 2. It is impossible to apply 1USE flag among two or more
>    countries because most of localization patches are conflict each other.

I agree that there are other countries that may have their own
localisation patches. However, some of the cjk patches do apply to all
double-byte character and kanji compatibility within applications. With
splitting the cjk USE flag, this means for those patches we'll likely
have to test for all 3 zh,ja,kr USE flags. 

With the conflicting patches, it should be up to the maintainer of the
package to make sure these patches don't conflict with each other with
different USE flag combinations. I don't think introducing more USE
flags will solve that problem, in fact it could potentially make it
worse.

With that said, I can see a number of advantages with having separate
language flags because there maybe chinese specific or japanese specific
patches that need to be installed. Or for instance, a chinese user would
not need to install japanese and korean fonts, and vice versa.

I agree with Nakano that the cjk/zh/ja/kr use flags should not be
confused with the LANGS discussion about selectively installing
translations (.po/.mo). This concerns mainly with patches and configure
options to specifically support XIM and double-byte characters.

My vote would be to _keep_ the "cjk" flag for instances where a patch or
particular configure option would benefit all double-byte character
users and then add the "zh", "ja" and "kr" USE flags as additional ones
where a particular patch/configure option is specific to only one
locale.

How do people think about that?

Cheers,
-- 
Alastair 'liquidx' Tse
 >> Gentoo Developer 
 >> http://www.liquidx.net/ | http://cvs.gentoo.org/~liquidx/
 >> GPG Key : http://cvs.gentoo.org/~liquidx/liquidx_gentoo_org.asc
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Georgi Georgiev]

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On 04/07/2003 at 11:01:06(+0100), Alastair Tse used 3.2K just to say:
> I agree that there are other countries that may have their own
> localisation patches. However, some of the cjk patches do apply to all
> double-byte character and kanji compatibility within applications. With
> splitting the cjk USE flag, this means for those patches we'll likely
> have to test for all 3 zh,ja,kr USE flags. 

Setting zh/ja/kr therefore implies cjk. Maybe portage can silently set cjk when
any of those three are set, and current ebuild would not have to be modified in
any way.

-- 
(    Georgi Georgiev   (  Extremism in the defense of liberty is no    (
 )    chutz@gg3.net     ) vice... moderation in the pursuit of justice  )
(   +81(90)6266-1163   (  is no virtue. -- Barry Goldwater             (

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Mamoru KOMACHI]

At 04 Jul 2003 11:01:06 +0100,
Alastair Tse wrote:

> 1. What is the difference between m17n (multilingualisation) and i18n
> (internationalisation)? Maybe we should use i18n instead of m17n since
> it seems more widely used, especially if it means the same thing.

m17n and i18n does not mean the same thing. m17n software handles
multiple languages and i18n software provides multiple language
interfaces. For example, m17n software could provide only English menu
and help but you can use several languages on it, while i18n software
might offer you Japanese menu and help even though it's not capable to
use multiple languages other than English.

> 2. If it is only chinese, japanese and korean, maybe we should just use
> zh, ja, kr as the USE flags. We have /usr/portage/use.desc to give it
> the right description. Is there a reason to have the "lang_" prefix in
> the USE flag?

I have the same opinion ;-)

> I agree with Nakano that the cjk/zh/ja/kr use flags should not be
> confused with the LANGS discussion about selectively installing
> translations (.po/.mo). This concerns mainly with patches and configure
> options to specifically support XIM and double-byte characters.

Absolutely. In my case, I don't use any translations (which are
configured by LANG variable) but m17n support. 

> My vote would be to _keep_ the "cjk" flag for instances where a patch or
> particular configure option would benefit all double-byte character
> users and then add the "zh", "ja" and "kr" USE flags as additional ones
> where a particular patch/configure option is specific to only one
> locale.

Agreed.

Regards,

--
Mamoru KOMACHI <usata@sodan.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
http://www.sodan.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~usata/


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Alastair Tse]

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On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 17:43, Mamoru KOMACHI wrote:
> m17n and i18n does not mean the same thing. m17n software handles
> multiple languages and i18n software provides multiple language
> interfaces. For example, m17n software could provide only English menu
> and help but you can use several languages on it, while i18n software
> might offer you Japanese menu and help even though it's not capable to
> use multiple languages other than English.

Thank you for your explaination :) I also google'd up a bit as well.
According the the Debian i18n guide, the difference is:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/intro-i18n.en.txt

_I18N_ (internationalization) model
          This model is to support many languages but only two of them,
          English (ASCII) and another one, at the same time.

_M17N_ (multilingualization) model
          This model is to support many languages at the same time.  For
          example, Mule (MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs) can handle
          a text file which contains multiple languages

In that case, I agree with the m17n flag then, because there is a very
distinct difference.

Cheers,
-- 
Alastair 'liquidx' Tse
 >> Gentoo Developer
 >> http://www.liquidx.net/ | http://cvs.gentoo.org/~liquidx/
 >> GPG Key : http://cvs.gentoo.org/~liquidx/liquidx_gentoo_org.asc
 >> FingerPrint : 579A 9B0E 43E8 0E40 EE93  BB1C 38CE 1C7B 3907 14F6


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Masatomo Nakano]

> 2. If it is only chinese, japanese and korean, maybe we should just use
> zh, ja, kr as the USE flags. We have /usr/portage/use.desc to give it
> the right description. Is there a reason to have the "lang_" prefix in
> the USE flag?

I think the prefix is good visibility for developers/users.
And it is good for the use.desc file, which is ordered in alphabetical 
order.

> My vote would be to _keep_ the "cjk" flag for instances where a patch or
> particular configure option would benefit all double-byte character
> users and then add the "zh", "ja" and "kr" USE flags as additional ones
> where a particular patch/configure option is specific to only one
> locale.

I agree with this idea.

Cheers,
Masatomo Nakano

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion to stop using 'cjk' USE flag.

[Masatomo Nakano]

hi

I've changed my mind a little after talking other developpers on IRC.
Please look at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9988 .

Thanks,
Masatomo Nakano

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