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yanmorin
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Post subject: Add French (Canada) support
 Posted: 11.11.2008, 19:51
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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Hi, i would like French (Canada) support in sidux.
Language code: fr_CA
Timezone: America/Montreal
console keyboard: cf
Xorg keyboards options:
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "ca"
In attachment, fr_CA-files.tar.gz contains:
- svn diff
- keymap.fr_CA.inc
- script to generate keymap.fr_CA.inc (command line is php kmap2siduxkeymap.php /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/cf.kmap.gz )
The php scripts is also available at this URL:
http://progysm.no-ip.org/pub/sidux/kmap ... eymap.phps |
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bfree
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Post subject: RE: Add French (Canada) support
Posted: 11.11.2008, 22:07
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Joined: 28.11.2006
Posts: 240
Status: Offline
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There is virtually no chance of fr_CA being added to the standard grub message file on sidux, the list of languages is already (probably) as big as it is going to get. If and when another language (not locale but actual distinct language) warrants being added one of the existing locales which is a variant of another language already there will probably have to be dropped. This doesn't stop you simply typing in lang=fr_CA at grub to get a more sane setup then simply picking French from the F4 menu will offer you though.
As it stands the fr_CA locale is not generated on sidux so you will still end up with the fr_FR LANG but with _US (the default) timezone and keyboard layout (which sets up the kdekeyboard widget to allow you to switch between us and ca keyboard layouts).
Suggestions for a sane patch to add a demographic section to the following would be nice though but it's worth noting that such a section should cover en_CA and fr_CA;
http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/fullstory/fl ... cales.init |
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ModestUser
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Post subject: RE: Add French (Canada) support
Posted: 12.11.2008, 02:26
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Joined: 07.01.2008
Posts: 351
Status: Offline
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@yanmorin: Could you give some info about your keyboard layout? In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Canadian_Multilingual_Standard, there are given two Canadian layouts. Which one is common in Quebec and which in the english speaking parts of Canada? My current guess is "us" keyboard layout (as xbklayout) for en_CA and "ca" layout (which is Canadian French layout) for fr_CA.
Of course, you can generate and set your locale by dpkg-reconfigure locales. You can also install the console-setup package.
EDIT: Ok, you already have given XKBLAYOUT=ca. So only the keyboard layout for en_CA is needed. |
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yanmorin
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Post subject: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 13:50
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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| Here is a patch for fr-ca and en-ca inside fll-live-initscripts |
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yanmorin
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 14:08
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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| The main problem with F4 menu with only French option is that most Québécois *will* choose "French" and then have a weird azerty keyboards (letters qwazxm, numbers 124567890 and others symbols are not at the right positions, there is only 20 keys at the same position). This is not like portuguese brazil/portugal choice where the keyboards don't differed radically (about 15 keys). It's like selecting English and having a Chinese keyboard instead, of course you can press F4 again, but you will be very disoriented when you first type. |
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ModestUser
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 14:27
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Joined: 07.01.2008
Posts: 351
Status: Offline
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| @yanmorin: Do the English-speaking Canadians use the "ca" layout as well? |
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yanmorin
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 14:52
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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@ModestUser, I've never talk to English-speaking Canadians about their keyboard, so I don't know. Maybe
it should be like this:
ca) ### CA Canada kb:ca ###
if [ "${LANG_CODE}" = "fr" ]; then
XKBLAYOUT="ca,us"
TZ="America/Montreal"
else
XKBLAYOUT="us,ca"
TZ="America/Toronto"
fi
MIRROR="ftp.ca.debian.org"
We could ask to Aaron Seigo  , I think he lives in Alberta. |
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bfree
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 15:11
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Joined: 28.11.2006
Posts: 240
Status: Offline
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First off thanks. Local knowledge is always needed to try and help us try to get these things right.
The question of what the English speaking Canadians would make of the "ca" keyboard is important and I have a few more! The fact no English Canadians have suggested that they would like the "ca" keyboard before now though makes me think your second suggestion of only using the "ca" keyboard by default for "fr_CA" might be right though. Again local knowledge needed.
Are the timezones for Montreal and Toronto not the same? Therefore TZ="America/Toronto" will be fine for all Canadians?
Are the en_CA and fr_CA locales different enough to en_US and fr_FR respectively to warrant generating the locales? Without generating the locales we can still set the XKBLAYOUT, TZ and MIRROR values for *_CA. If you enter lang=fr_CA or lang=en_CA now on sidux and then use the kdeapplet to switch to the "ca" keyboard what is "wrong" apart from mirror and timezone?
To explain why we generally want to avoid generating additional locales, any additionally generated locales slow down dist-upgrade's involving locales for all systems unless the admin reconfigures locales to only generate the locales they want on that system. Local knowledge is needed to help us figure out the best approach for us to take here. Please don't read the above as a refusal to add needed locales, I'm just trying to get all the information to propose the best possible changes to sidux for all users.
As for the F4 issue of picking French giving a confusing system to a "Québécois", I cannot currently see any option here other then trying to let them know they should just type in "lang=fr_CA". Portuguese (and English) both currently have variants in the grub menu, but these are the first targets for removal when a new language (not variant) comes along which warrants being added to the grub-gfxboot menu. Due to the space limits the general plan is that only distinct languages in their default locales will appear there.
If anyone is insane enough to volunteer to work on grub-gfxboot to add the ability to extend the menu's to allow more languages and help maintain it, please go ahead and submit tested patches. Note that it will have to continue to work on screens such as the smaller netbooks (e.g. 640x480) and be warned it is an odd beast that nobody likes to work with!
As a wild aside Canada cropped up in my explorations of places where Irish still has a small existance. I've been pondering extending celtux to cover the other celtic languages (zero promises on this though), which would draw in Breton and as a result French as I feel it's only sane to include the major local languages to complement the minority languages. If I go down this route then celtux would end up with en_CA and fr_CA support from it's grub menu (along with a mythical ga_CA, br_FR, cy_GB etc.). So you've got a supportive ear here, keep talking 
Thanks again. |
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yanmorin
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 20:06
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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Some statistics (taken on wikipedia):
Canada have 6 official timezones (UTC−3.5 to −8 and in Summer UTC−2.5 to −7).
In Quebec, about 6 millions people speak French and the number of people in Montreal metropolitan area is about 3.6 millions.
In Ontario, there is about 13 millions people (38,8% of Canada Population), speaking english and the number of people in Toronto metropolitan area is about 5.6 millions.
French Québécois use mostly a qwerty Canadian French keyboard because it's really hard to find a Canadian Multilingual keyboard in store. It cost almost 40$ for a multilingual and 10$ for a Canadian French. On laptops, I've only seen a Canadian Multilingual keyboard once, and it was an Apple laptop.
For locales, LC_MESSAGES can be the same in France and Québec (fr_FR or a fallback on fr_FR is ok). Others categories should be fr_CA. By examples, fr_FR monetary is Euro, fr_CA is $CAN (dollar). In fr_CA, we use a comma for decimal, in en_CA, a dot.
The file /usr/share/i18n/locales/fr_CA is already there on the CD and I think it's ok. |
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yanmorin
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 20:18
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Joined: 11.11.2008
Posts: 6
Status: Offline
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In grub, is it be possible to add a dynamic menu based on selected language for countries?
Instead of only a language menu, we could select the language like French (using a default for this language like fr_FR), and then a dynamic menu F5 could offer the choice: France, Canada, Belgique? If you don't choose F5, the default is used.
Checking in /usr/share/i18n/locales, I see that there is 16 variant for english, 18 variants for arabic language, 21 in spanish.
Of course, supporting every locales will be too much for the gui display, but right now, it would be like 2 or 3 by languages. |
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bfree
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Post subject: RE: Adding patch for fll-live-initscripts.fll-locales.init
Posted: 12.11.2008, 21:09
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Joined: 28.11.2006
Posts: 240
Status: Offline
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| gfxboot is an ugly beast and there's nobody in the existing team who is about to even attempt to do what you have described. It is technically possible though, so as I hinted earlier anyone insane enough to try and create some clean and maintainable patches is more then welcome to join in! I've just committed a DEMO_CODE section for Canada to the fll-locales initscript in svn and for now at least I believe that is the best we can do (bar some possible documentation improvements to help people out). |
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