Comment 11 for bug 9392

Revision history for this message
Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen (ralf-nieuwenhuijsen) wrote :

Another possible fix, is to not ask which language people want to install. Just install the English environment by default.

This way, users are forced to use System -> Admin -> Languages, and their language will be fully supported.
The current situation is just messy. I took a while to figure out, even for me, how to get proper dictionaries.

Current scenario:
  - user selects 'Dutch' when installing Ubuntu
  - user has no spell checking in OpenOffice nor Firefox
  - user goes to Language Support
  - user sees Dutch already selected
  - user goes to add/remove, finds nothing of interest.
  - user searches the internet and forums
  - user eventually finds he/she has to type something in the terminal
  - user goes back to forum
  - user says 'linux isn't ready yet, you still need to use the terminal'

I am not saying the User is completely right. But I can see what happened and why.
Possible fixes are:

 1. offer and promote a dvd version with full language support (cons: costs more bandwidth)
 2. release language/region specific cd's (cons: lots of work)
 3. try and download the spelling dictionaries during installation (cons: problem remains if no network connection)
 4. make openoffice and firefox complain about not having a dutch dictionary and offer to download/install them (much like we do with codecs!)
 5. separate dictionaries from translations in the language support dialog. This way users can see whats going on and do something about it.

I vote for a combination of 3, 4 and 5.
So, we try to install them by default if there is a network connection.
When launching OpenOffice or Firefox and no dictionary is found, user gets a dialog:
------------------------------------------------------
    No dictionaries for your language found.
    Would you like to install them now?

    [ ] dont ask again.

   [Yes] [No]
------------------------------------------------------
Clicking Yes, will install them using Language Support.

Related bugs:
  - firefox has a menu option to install additional dictionaries, which does NOT launch language support (it should!)
  - firefox does not select default dictionary based on language chosen at login time (it should!)