Re: Resignation
Steve Langasek
> Am Mit, 2004-05-05 um 11.37 schrieb Josip Rodin:
> > On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 08:07:55AM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > > Free software extremists I can live with. But this is too much.
> > > I will resign from this project in two weeks time.
> > [earlier quote:]
> > > If this is your attitude, then I shall resign this project. I do not
> > > wish to be associated with people who're actively working towards the
> > > independence of Taiwan.
> > After everything, Xu quits Debian because of *nationalism*!
> Is it necessary at all, to use names of political systems like names of
> states? Would it not be better, to use unpolitical names of geological
> formations eg. "Island Taiwan"?
> People keep migrating and political systems come and go. Names of states
> and citys are changing throughout the world. Names of islands, mountains
> and rivers will stay for much longer time periods.
> I love the work, Herbert has done and I would miss him.
The name people are asking to have listed in the Debian installer is
"Taiwan". Please explain how this is a politically-charged name.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
Hamish Moffatt
> The name people are asking to have listed in the Debian installer is
> "Taiwan". Please explain how this is a politically-charged name.
Apparently the situation is politically charged because it's the only
entry where we differ from the ISO 3166 list.
http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html
I suspect that if we started from scratch and put .tw => "Taiwan"
there'd be no issue.
Hamish
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Wang WenRui
> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 01:57:21PM +0200, Hugo Wau wrote:
> The name people are asking to have listed in the Debian installer is
debian-devel, debian-boot and debian-users here several weeks ago, IIRC.
> "Taiwan". Please explain how this is a politically-charged name.
/---------------------[Choose *country*]-----------------\
| Choose your country: |
| |
| China |
| Hong Kong |
| Taiwan |
| |
| |
\_______________________________________________________/
This is ridiculous. Nobody calls Hong Kong a country. When it comes to
Taiwan: Taiwan is a province of Republic of China and The People's
Republic of China considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory[1].
Now something about the independence movement[2]:
It is a political movement whose goal is to create a sovereign, independent
Republic of Taiwan out of the lands currently administered by the
Republic of China. It is supported by the pan-green coalition on Taiwan
and opposed by the pan-blue coalition and the People's Republic of
China, which favor Chinese reunification.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence
Denis Barbier
> Around 08 o'clock on 05 May, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 01:57:21PM +0200, Hugo Wau wrote:
> > The name people are asking to have listed in the Debian installer is
> Just *some* people do. Some of these people started a large thread in
> debian-devel, debian-boot and debian-users here several weeks ago, IIRC.
> > "Taiwan". Please explain how this is a politically-charged name.
> The 2nd screen of d-i:
>
> /---------------------[Choose *country*]-----------------\
> | Choose your country: |
> | |
> | China |
> | Hong Kong |
> | Taiwan |
> | |
> | |
> \_______________________________________________________/
This is incredibly unfair, you are well aware
http://lists.debian.org/debian-chinese-gb/2004/03/msg00102.html
that this has been partly fixed in beta4, question now looks like
/-----------------------[Choose country]---------------------\
| Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
| countries, territories or areas of particular geopolitical |
| interest. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
| |
| Choose your country, territory or area: |
| China |
| Hong Kong |
| Taiwan |
| other |
\____________________________________________________________/
As I disagree with Christian, I created a test branch for countrychooser
svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/d-i/people/barbier/countrychooser
svn://svn.debian.org/d-i/people/barbier/countrychooser
to get rid of remaining "choose country" short forms and requested for
comments
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/05/msg00205.html
to see if this version was less controversial. I am still waiting for
comments.
Denis
Wang WenRui
> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 10:29:52PM +0800, Wang WenRui wrote:
>
> This is incredibly unfair, you are well aware
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-chinese-gb/2004/03/msg00102.html
> that this has been partly fixed in beta4, question now looks like
menu entry is still wrong, and the last message I got is that it won't be
fixed because the correct text is long as a main menu entry.
>
> /-----------------------[Choose country]---------------------\
> | Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
> | countries, territories or areas of particular geopolitical |
> | interest. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
> | |
> | Choose your country, territory or area: |
> | China |
> | Hong Kong |
> | Taiwan |
> | other |
> \____________________________________________________________/
>
> As I disagree with Christian, I created a test branch for countrychooser
> svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/d-i/people/barbier/countrychooser
> svn://svn.debian.org/d-i/people/barbier/countrychooser
> to get rid of remaining "choose country" short forms and requested for
> comments
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/05/msg00205.html
> to see if this version was less controversial. I am still waiting for
> comments.
Thank you and Christian for your work.
>
> Denis
>
>
John Hasler
Like this:
/-----------------------[Choose area]------------------------\
| Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
| areas. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
| |
| Choose your area: |
| China |
| Hong Kong |
| Taiwan |
| other |
\____________________________________________________________/
--
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jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
Christian Perrier
Quoting John Hasler (jo...@dhh.gt.org):
> Why not just say 'Area'?
>
> Like this:
>
> /-----------------------[Choose area]------------------------\
> | Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
> | areas. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
This is a good suggestion though I fear a bit that the main menu would
then become a bit cryptic
Choose language
Choose area
.../...
"Country or area" is maybe the best possibility which comes to my mind.
About the countrychooser main menu, I begin to seriously think about a
disclaimer:
"The list below is based on official ISO-3166 country or area
names. Debian is not responsible for these names assignments. Please
refer to (ISO-3166 FAQ URL) for details about ISO-3166 entries."
Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña
> >
> > KDE control center in Debian displays Taiwanese flag, so you should
> > certainly resign from Debian and join Fedora. Well I did not check
> > if Fedora still censors it, but as Red Hat did, there is little
> > chance that this has changed.
WTF have you done translators? You've converted a non-issue (a translation)
into a political statement (Taiwan independent?) into a bigger problem for
Debian (kernel maintenance). You're not the only one to blame here (other
translators at debian-boot are to blame for this issue) but you've allowed
things to get out of hand.
So, please, Christian, explain this:
> Because, imho, this is a case where we plan to deviate from a
> standard. We have strong arguments for doing this, most of them being
> motivated by the Debian Social Contract (make our possible to benefit
> our users), and I think they will be even stronger if they are
> accepted to Debian Technical Comittee.
[http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/05/msg00290.html]
What _technical_ advantage to our users does this deviation from the
standard introduce? I just don't see it. Feel free to ask for a change in
the standard, if needed be, not in the name of the Debian project (unless
you are empowered somehow to do so).
Last time I looked, Debian did not had any political bias. And now it shows
up, hurting our ability to do technical work.
Nice job.
Javier
Christian Perrier
> WTF have you done translators? You've converted a non-issue (a translation)
> into a political statement (Taiwan independent?) into a bigger problem for
> Debian (kernel maintenance). You're not the only one to blame here (other
> translators at debian-boot are to blame for this issue) but you've allowed
> things to get out of hand.
I'm a bit surprised by your vision of these things. It appears that
you see this problem as coming from translators.
Up to now, the issue of the Taiwan country name has the following
background, to my understanding:
-d-i uses iso-codes for country names and translations
-iso-codes uses ISO-3166 as a reference
-one entry in ISO-3166 appears to hurt the sensitivity of some Debian
users and contributors
-we (everyone : d-i team, Chinese people, other DD's) try to explore
all possible solutions for keeping both our commitment to standards
and our users happy
-possible solutions are currently explored
-Herbert announces he want to resign because during discussions the
possibility of replacing the offending name has been mentioned
As I already wrote in another mail in this thread (the mail was less
highly crossposted than this one, especially not in -devel), I think
this reaction is way too important and far too early.
I do not see any specific actions from translators for ending in this
situation. It mostly looks like overreacting to something that even
DID NOT HAPPEN is to be blamed here.
> So, please, Christian, explain this:
>
> > Because, imho, this is a case where we plan to deviate from a
> > standard. We have strong arguments for doing this, most of them being
> > motivated by the Debian Social Contract (make our possible to benefit
> > our users), and I think they will be even stronger if they are
> > accepted to Debian Technical Comittee.
> [http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/05/msg00290.html]
>
> What _technical_ advantage to our users does this deviation from the
> standard introduce? I just don't see it. Feel free to ask for a change in
No technical advantage, of course. My feeling is that deliberately
deviating from a standard has to get some validation somewhere. I do
not feel authorized (or Alastair who is the iso-codes package
maintainer) to do this, if I decide to do so (WHICH NEITHER I NOR
ALASTAIR DID....look at fr.po for the iso_3166 list), only based on my
own opinion.
If you think the Technical Commitee is inappropriate for this, I may
understand. But then, we will have to find some validation structure.
> the standard, if needed be, not in the name of the Debian project (unless
> you are empowered somehow to do so).
This is part of the current actions, see the thread. A proposal for
specifically asking the ISO-3166-MA on this issue has been made,
because it seems to appear that they aren't clear on this topic.
>
> Last time I looked, Debian did not had any political bias. And now it shows
> up, hurting our ability to do technical work.
>
> Nice job.
I absolutely do not appreciate being accused of bringing a political
bias on this topic. If you look back, you won't see any such action
from myself for this. A non technical issue has been raised by some of
our users and we're trying to find a possible solution for it. I do
have my own opinion and I have made my possible for not pushing it
behind to much, that's all.
All this involves some discussion between people who feel
concerned. This discussion is still happening. No conlusion has been
made yet and I'm not even sure that there is a solution which will
satisfy everyone.
So, I have no idea of which "nice job" we (and specifically myself)
have made.
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Alastair McKinstry
Herbert, why precisely are you resigning? is it because,
as was pointed out elsewhere, Debian includes flags for Taiwan,
implicitly supporting Taiwanese independence? Thank you
for giving two weeks notice; hopefully we can use this to
come up with a solution.
As was pointed out elsewhere on the list, there are a bunch of
programs that include flags, and lists of countries, within
Debian. This could be refactored into a single collection
(in a single directory).
I think we should look at POSIX locales as a model: it is
basically impossible to come up with a set of countries / territories that does
not offend someone. In the POSIX locales model, they managed to sidestep this
issue by _not_ generating a list of territories, but creating a model where
users
could add their own with 'localeconf'. While we ship a bunch of
locales in the locales package, we don't claim that they are
definitive and users can change them.
I created the iso-codes package to refactor the multiple lists of countries,
languages and their translations present in
GNU/Linux, to avoid wasting space and add consistentcy. Unfortunately the approach
taken does create a
list which purports to be definitive, and causes this conflict.
I am willing to reconsider how to do this. Possible solutions
include:
- Generating any list of countries/languages from the installed
locales
- refactoring programs to use flags in, eg. /usr/share/flags
which a user can edit (either by hand or installing
a package (eg. elbonian-independence.deb, complete
with Elbonian locale and flag and translations ...)
This doesn't solve the debian-installer list problem; hopefully
the countrychooser (choose language then country) compromise
there will suffice.
All constructive suggestions welcome, (though please don't
make any such work another gating issue for Sarge :-)
Regards,
Alastair McKinstry
Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim
> Excuse me now as I go away and laugh my ass off.
Unfortunately, what is considered funny somewhere, is perhaps
considered a very serious issue in another part of this
universe :( !
Fortunately, there is something called "Fork": If you don't like
on how the current installer works, just Fork it to the way you
like it!
PS:
- this email was written with a keyboard made in TW (ISO-3166),
monitor made in TW, and motherboard made in TW. Yours may
vary, and void where prohibited :).
--
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Fetch my GNUPG public key at http://rms46.vlsm.org/pgp/pub.txt ---
Anton Zinoviev
>
> After everything, Xu quits Debian because of *nationalism*!
Probably things are more complicated than they seam to be. AFAIK
there are many people (a majority?) in Taiwan that do not want
independence from China (of course they want independence from Peoples
Republic of China). Both in P.R.of China and Taiwan R.O.C there are
many people that do not want se see the breakage irreversible. On the
other hand after so many years, naturaly in Taiwan there are people
that want their own independent country forever. I am not sure
whether people that belong to "stable" nations and states from ages
can understand how sore can be the present processes in Taiwan for the
people in the both parts of China.
So it is probably not just a nationalism (in the way I understand this
word) but a matter of the real life.
I am not sure if Debian is able to find a compromise but it seams to
me that the following statement is acceptable for the people in Taiwan
and less unacceptable for the people in P.R. of China: "Taiwan is part
of China, but it is not part of P.R. of China." Not sure if it is
possible to find a short teritory name with this semantics.
By the way the name of Hong Kong in debian-installer is "Hong Kong"
and nobody objected that this means that Hong Kong is independent from
China. Why it should be different with Taiwan?
Anton Zinoviev
Jean-Michel POURE
> "Taiwan". Please explain how this is a politically-charged name.
Taïwan is not part of the United-Nations for historical reasons, since China
took the place of its reprentatives in the United-Nations. Taïwan is not a
recognized state. The Taïwanese flag does not have international recognition.
For example, you will hardly find a single legal Taïwan ambassy in the world.
But, keep in mind that localisation is mostly adapting each software to the
locale habits and practices. In the case of Taïwan, the choice should be left
to the Taïwanese representatives of Debian.
Regards,
Jean-Michel Pouré
Andreas Barth
> But, keep in mind that localisation is mostly adapting each software to the
> locale habits and practices. In the case of Taïwan, the choice should be left
> to the Taïwanese representatives of Debian.
Our only Developer there said he prefers "Taiwan" as name. This
settled the case for me, total independend of any of my private
opinions on this matter.
Cheers,
Andi
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Scott James Remnant
> Denis Barbier <bar...@linuxfr.org> wrote:
> >
> > KDE control center in Debian displays Taiwanese flag, so you should
> > certainly resign from Debian and join Fedora. Well I did not check
> > if Fedora still censors it, but as Red Hat did, there is little
> > chance that this has changed.
>
> So be it.
>
> Free software extremists I can live with. But this is too much.
> I will resign from this project in two weeks time.
>
*cough*
Why are you resigning in "two weeks time" ? Traditionally when one
tantrums, one throws one's toys out of the pram as hard and fast as one
possibly can. An immediate resignation and orphaning of all packages
tends to take place. Adrian and Bruce have demonstrated how to do this
superbly many times.
Perhaps you're bluffing and hoping that the shock announcement of your
resignation will cause those who have offended you to stop doing so and
follow your wishes in the matter?
Or maybe you're hoping that by giving everyone some time, they'll be
sufficient "DON'T DO IT!" mails that you can publicly state that you
persuaded to run^Wcome back by overwhelming public support?
Amused of Birmingham
--
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist?
Petter Reinholdtsen
> You are right to notice that the word "country" should be changed. I
> don't know the installer enough to make a proposal, but "location"
> seems more appropriate.
Yes, "country" in that context is not very accurate.
I believe locale names specify the second part of a locale to mean
country or region. See <URL:http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc3066.html>
for info on this part.
As the listing is in fact a map from the second part of locales to
names, it should probably ask the user to select "country or region".
Martin Michlmayr
> Why are you resigning in "two weeks time" ? Traditionally when one
> Amused of Birmingham
Can you please all stop being so damn hostile to each other?
--
Martin Michlmayr
t...@cyrius.com
Florian Weimer
> As was pointed out elsewhere on the list, there are a bunch of
> programs that include flags, and lists of countries, within
> Debian. This could be refactored into a single collection
> (in a single directory).
We could remove those flags alltogether.
Microsoft once had a similar problem with the time zone selection
dialog. It showed the borders of time zones, which some times matched
borders of countries. Fierce discussions resulted because some of
those borders were disputed. As a result, Microsoft changed the
dialogue not to indicate the borders.
As far as I know, Microsoft products do not display any flags (maybe
some flags are shipped as clip-art, though). Perhaps this is a wise
decision.
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Francesco Paolo Lovergine
>
> Why are you resigning in "two weeks time" ? Traditionally when one
Maybe because a two-weeks notice is considered a good term for
resignation for a job? Herbert considers seriously his involvement
into the project and this approach is coherent with
his consideration. I'd do the same.
--
Francesco P. Lovergine
Eddy Petrisor
Just say "choose location" and get over with it...
Don't use iso-s, just the short names...
Isn't there _any_ standard that satisfies this request?
I say we should go for the short names on the maps... is _less_ likely
to have any conflict with those.
And we even get rid of the political charge as nobody can acuse us of
saying that X is a country,
teritory, an independent teritory, or whatever! Is just a location !!
That's the beauty of it ;) !
Eddy
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Henning Makholm
> As the listing is in fact a map from the second part of locales to
> names, it should probably ask the user to select "country or region".
How about just calling it "(language) variant"? That would seem to
sidestepping sidestepping the - apparently controversial - issue of
choosing a generic noun to cover geographical areas.
For example "country or region" does not begin to describe the issues
involved in choosing between the "nynorsk" and "bokmål" ortographies
for the Norwegian language. Perhaps we're handling that by considering
them separate languages (I'm too lazy to check), but as far as I
understand the situation should fairly closely parallel the different
ways of writing down Chinese [1]. It would be sensible to handle them
though a common mechanism.
[1] Except that users of nynorsk resp. bokmål are not conveniently
grouped geographically.
--
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ty de kunde tala sanning lika väl som någon
annan, när de bara visste vad det tjänade til."
Christian Perrier
> > You are right to notice that the word "country" should be changed. I
> > don't know the installer enough to make a proposal, but "location"
> > seems more appropriate.
>
> Yes, "country" in that context is not very accurate.
When the first releases of countrychooser were being thought, I
imagined this problem and thought about using "Choose location"
I was however told further that indeed "location" may seem pretty
vague as this may be a country, region, land, state, city, school,
whatever in the mind of the reader.
Because the list is far closer to a list of countries rather than a
list of "regions", the menu entry was finally made to "Choose
country". Note however that the official wording of iso-3166 is used
in the main countrychooser screens ("country, region or other area of
geopolitical interest").....this coming from a bug raised by the
Chinese people (mostly because it lists "China", "Taiwan blah blah",
"Hong-Kong" and at least one of these isn't a country, strictly
speaking)
So, sure, changing the entry for "Choose a country or region" may seem
appropriate, but then I fear that we receive complaints asking why
this or that region is not listed (examples: Catalunya, Corsica,
Basque Country, Bretagne and so on..).
There's also another argument in not putting "country or region" :
avoid nightmares to translators for keeping their translations short.
In some countries (not English speaking ones as far as I know, but
several European countries), including mine, the word "region" has a
very specific meaning : administrative subdivision of the country.
So, for instance, in France, I suspect the word "région" could be
highly confusing.
Maybe "area" or "territory" could be more appropriate.
> I believe locale names specify the second part of a locale to mean
> country or region. See <URL:http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc3066.html>
> for info on this part.
>
> As the listing is in fact a map from the second part of locales to
> names, it should probably ask the user to select "country or region".
This is a good argument also, sure.
I expect other people bring their opinion also.
Christian Perrier
Quoting Henning Makholm (hen...@makholm.net):
> Scripsit Petter Reinholdtsen <pe...@hungry.com>
>
> > As the listing is in fact a map from the second part of locales to
> > names, it should probably ask the user to select "country or region".
>
> How about just calling it "(language) variant"? That would seem to
> sidestepping sidestepping the - apparently controversial - issue of
> choosing a generic noun to cover geographical areas.
>
> For example "country or region" does not begin to describe the issues
> involved in choosing between the "nynorsk" and "bokmål" ortographies
> for the Norwegian language. Perhaps we're handling that by considering
This choice is part of languagechooser, not countrychooser.
In Debian Installer, it is very clear that language variants are
selected through languagechooser. Even for the two languages we
currently have for which the variants are chosen by a "region" code
("pt" vs. "pt_BR" and "zh_CN" vs "zh_TW").
> them separate languages (I'm too lazy to check), but as far as I
> understand the situation should fairly closely parallel the different
> ways of writing down Chinese [1]. It would be sensible to handle them
> though a common mechanism.
>
> [1] Except that users of nynorsk resp. bokmål are not conveniently
> grouped geographically.
The case for Norwegian is indeed really easy to deal with as there are
two iso-639 language codes for Bokmål and nynorsk..... If you look at
languagechooser, you will find two different entries for both
Norwegian languages.
Dealing with pt/pt_BR is a bit less easier as it is currently
impossible for someone to choose the Brazilian Portuguese translations
and any country (portuguese speaking or not) other than Brazil.....so
I'm afraid a Brazilian guy living in Portugal has a small problem.
Christian Perrier
> Just say "choose location" and get over with it...
There has been at least one report that "location" (it has been used
in the past) may sound too vague.
My opinion has been that as long as we use iso-3166 the best is using
the wording of iso-3166 for designating the entries in the list.
> I say we should go for the short names on the maps... is _less_ likely
> to have any conflict with those.
I'm afraid you're just dreaming...:-)
Which maps? Chinese ones or Taiwanese ones? Greek ones or Macedonian
ones? I guess you got the point.
Some have suggested using the National Geographic maps. Though I'm a
monthly reader of the NG magazine, I think that they also may be
politically biased (NGM has recently shown some signs of political
orientations which have indeed hurted several of their non-US readers
as well as some US readers).
Finding an internationnaly recognised standard for these highly
sensitive topics such as country names is *very* difficult. Up to now,
I'm still convinced that the less bad list is iso-3166 (Denis Barbier
proposal is also the use of iso-3166 as ICU codes are officially
announced to use iso-3166).
Peter Constantinidis
I think an alternative suggestion worth considering instead is 'Residence'.
Peter.
Jean-Michel POURE
> > | Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
> > | areas. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
>
> This is a good suggestion though I fear a bit that the main menu would
> then become a bit cryptic
>
> Choose language
> Choose area
> .../...
Sounds better.
> "The list below is based on official ISO-3166 country or area
> names. Debian is not responsible for these names assignments. Please
> refer to (ISO-3166 FAQ URL) for details about ISO-3166 entries."
The only critic about this ISO definition is that it does not make a clear
difference between traditionnal Chinese and simplified Chinese.
I assume that a Chinese from Continental China may be interested in choosing
traditionnal Chinese (as spoken in Taiwan)... Why not?
Cheers,
Jean-Michel
Thiemo Seufer
> (please followup to -boot)
>
> Quoting John Hasler (jo...@dhh.gt.org):
> > Why not just say 'Area'?
> >
> > Like this:
> >
> > /-----------------------[Choose area]------------------------\
> > | Based on your language, you are probably in one of these |
> > | areas. If you are elsewhere, choose "other". |
>
> This is a good suggestion though I fear a bit that the main menu would
> then become a bit cryptic
>
> Choose language
> Choose area
> .../...
>
> "Country or area" is maybe the best possibility which comes to my mind.
Why not "Location"? It's AFAIK politically neutral and doesn't clutter
the screen with a multi-word description.
> About the countrychooser main menu, I begin to seriously think about a
> disclaimer:
>
> "The list below is based on official ISO-3166 country or area
> names. Debian is not responsible for these names assignments. Please
> refer to (ISO-3166 FAQ URL) for details about ISO-3166 entries."
Please don't. :-)
In the next step, some Taiwanese may question the "official", because
the UN is nothing official to them.
Thiemo
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Christian Perrier
> The only critic about this ISO definition is that it does not make a clear
> difference between traditionnal Chinese and simplified Chinese.
Well, this is another debate : I have the feeling that both languages
should rather have different ISO (639...which is the standard for
languages) codes but there's an objection about this :
Traditional and Simplified are, IIRC, two different scripts for *writing*
Chinese, not speaking it. The different ways of *speaking* Chinese are
Mandarin, Cantonese and so on, all being written either Traditional or
Simplified....
So, there is no specific language code for each as ISO-639 codes are
codes for written languages (this is explained in the ISO-639 FAQ) not
for scripts.
Lots of answers about this at
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/faq.html, especially points 23
and 24.
>
> I assume that a Chinese from Continental China may be interested in choosing
> traditionnal Chinese (as spoken in Taiwan)... Why not?
This is possible in d-i. He chooses Traditional Chinese on first
screen, then China as country on second screen. The locale (debconf
value debian-installer/locale) will be zh_TW, thus giving him the
Traditional Chinese translations, but the country (debconf value
debian-installer/country) will be China and, for instance, he will
have the default timezones for Continental China as choices as well as
other country-dependent settings (the mirror in the future).
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John Hasler
> This is a good suggestion though I fear a bit that the main menu would
> then become a bit cryptic
I agree that 'area' may be a bit cryptic (though not as much so as
'locale'). However, 'country', the logical choice, seems to be pretty much
ruled out by politics.
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jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
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Denis Barbier
[...]
> Finding an internationnaly recognised standard for these highly
> sensitive topics such as country names is *very* difficult. Up to now,
> I'm still convinced that the less bad list is iso-3166 (Denis Barbier
> proposal is also the use of iso-3166 as ICU codes are officially
> announced to use iso-3166).
This is plain wrong, my opinion is that we do not have to get stuck to
a standard; maintainers are solely responsible to their packages, and
if some people dislike these choices, they can fork it.
So in my modified version of countrychooser, I gathered English names
from ISO 3166, ICU or other sources, and did the same for the French
translation.
Denis
Gunnar Wolf
> When the first releases of countrychooser were being thought, I
> imagined this problem and thought about using "Choose location"
>
> I was however told further that indeed "location" may seem pretty
> vague as this may be a country, region, land, state, city, school,
> whatever in the mind of the reader.
>
> Because the list is far closer to a list of countries rather than a
> list of "regions", the menu entry was finally made to "Choose
> country". Note however that the official wording of iso-3166 is used
> in the main countrychooser screens ("country, region or other area of
> geopolitical interest").....this coming from a bug raised by the
> Chinese people (mostly because it lists "China", "Taiwan blah blah",
> "Hong-Kong" and at least one of these isn't a country, strictly
> speaking)
Maybe the best way to avoid the name-that-geographical-entity wordgame
would be to ask 'where are you', 'where do you plan on using this
computer' or something like that.
Greetings,
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PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
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Christian Perrier
> This is plain wrong, my opinion is that we do not have to get stuck to
This is not "plain wrong", Denis. This is a proof that we
disagree..:-)
By the way, this is also a proof that though we disagree we appreciate
each other's work anyway.
> a standard; maintainers are solely responsible to their packages, and
> if some people dislike these choices, they can fork it.
So, if I hear you properly, you suggest that anyone disliking the
current way Debian Installer deals with these issues forks its own
version of d-i?
No irony below this...just trying to be sure I understand your point.
> So in my modified version of countrychooser, I gathered English names
> from ISO 3166, ICU or other sources, and did the same for the French
> translation.
Which I appreciate, as you give people an option to see what are the
possible alternatives.
Denis Barbier
> Quoting Denis Barbier (bar...@linuxfr.org):
>
> > This is plain wrong, my opinion is that we do not have to get stuck to
>
> This is not "plain wrong", Denis. This is a proof that we
> disagree..:-)
You wrote in your previous mail:
CP> Finding an internationnaly recognised standard for these highly
CP> sensitive topics such as country names is *very* difficult. Up to now,
CP> I'm still convinced that the less bad list is iso-3166 (Denis Barbier
CP> proposal is also the use of iso-3166 as ICU codes are officially
CP> announced to use iso-3166).
I feel enough qualified to tell that my proposal does not promote
the use of ISO 3166, any list can be used instead if it better
fits countrychooser needs.
> By the way, this is also a proof that though we disagree we appreciate
> each other's work anyway.
>
> > a standard; maintainers are solely responsible to their packages, and
> > if some people dislike these choices, they can fork it.
>
> So, if I hear you properly, you suggest that anyone disliking the
> current way Debian Installer deals with these issues forks its own
> version of d-i?
Sure, how do you want to prevent that?
But there is another option: one might also only fork countrychooser ;)
Denis
Denis Barbier
> So be it.
>
> Free software extremists I can live with. But this is too much.
> I will resign from this project in two weeks time.
>
> Any packages which are not claimed for in two weeks time will be orphaned
> and th usual rules shall apply.
I proposed some changes to countrychooser before this discussion
was moved to debian-devel and made an unofficial branch to seek
for comments; a PO file is temporarily available at
http://people.debian.org/~barbier/tmp/zh_CN.po
Please tell us whether these strings are acceptable from your
point of view, and if not which changes you would like to see.
If you insist on leaving, I can not stop you.
Herbert Xu
>
> I proposed some changes to countrychooser before this discussion
> was moved to debian-devel and made an unofficial branch to seek
> for comments; a PO file is temporarily available at
> http://people.debian.org/~barbier/tmp/zh_CN.po
> Please tell us whether these strings are acceptable from your
> point of view, and if not which changes you would like to see.
> If you insist on leaving, I can not stop you.
Thank you for considering the issue.
Whether I find it acceptable is no longer relevant as it is already
too late for me to back out of this process.
Cheers,
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Email: Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <her...@gondor.apana.org.au>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
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Zenaan Harkness
> On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 08:19:54AM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
> >
> > I proposed some changes to countrychooser before this discussion
> > was moved to debian-devel and made an unofficial branch to seek
> > for comments; a PO file is temporarily available at
> > http://people.debian.org/~barbier/tmp/zh_CN.po
> > Please tell us whether these strings are acceptable from your
> > point of view, and if not which changes you would like to see.
> > If you insist on leaving, I can not stop you.
>
> Thank you for considering the issue.
>
> Whether I find it acceptable is no longer relevant as it is already
> too late for me to back out of this process.
We see first a man of dedication and diligence, then of principles,
and now of resolution.
Thanks for all you've contributed, and all the best as you go forward,
Zenaan
J. sun
I have been an active Debian user for several years. Although I have not
contributed directly to Debian, but I admire Debian's ideal, and have
been pushing Debian relentlessly in my own company, my custormers, and
friends. I also made a Chinese version of Morphix available at
cosoft.org.cn.
Taiwan issue is a sensitive one. It may be laughable to a westerner who
doesn't, and doesn't want to try, to know some resent history ( last 150
years) of China, and it may be even resentful for someone to whom the
greater China present a threat to whatever he believes in. But to
Chinese this is a very emotional issue. One example is that Panasonic
had a model of cell phones on the market in mainland China with a
language selection which appeared to recognize Taiwan as a independent
country. The cell phone passed the government inspection and was in the
market. One costomer noticed this little menu and was so upset, she
started to complain to the consumer association, all the web sites,
etc. In a month the model was recalled, and Panasonic cell phone
business in China has been struggling ever since in China, which has
most cell phone sets in the world.
I hope debian can keep its political neutrual policy, and find an
agreeable political-neutrual solutions. We have TW_big5, TW_utf8,
HK_big5-hkscs etc.... already, pretty sure we can find common theme in
other things too.