Hello.
Current progress:
- change widget exec order (parallel->sequential) to comply with "localization
notes" part of design - DONE.
- setup squid-deb-proxy - DONE.
- make .iso build - DONE.
- change widget to fit many more languages: from flag icons to scrollable list -
DONE.
- (re)generate .po with (dummy) translations (to show that language change is
actually working) - DONE.
- populate the list of supported languages in the widget from gnome-desktop-data
package languages or dpkg-reconfigure locales (see gdm_get_all_language_names
function for example) - DONE (with external helper script).
- 'subprocess': run external (locale-gen) program with adequate parameters on
language change and wait for its completion before allowing logon - in progress.
- update tails-greeter.deb package - in progress.
- propose rough plans / estimates for all the remaining weeks - postponed.
Problems
Current implementation uses gtk's ComboBox for the list of languages. Switching
to scrollable list (similar to debian-installer) might require to scale better to
bigger number of languages but it will take a bit more efforts to integrate it with
gtkme wrapper.
Pygtk functions for window.show() and window.hide() do not work as expected -
sometimes window which supposed to be hidden remain visible despite successful gtk
property change. Right now the workaround is to call window.destroy() however this
might not scale that well if we will have multiple windows with complex interactions
in between in future. To summarize: worth investigating but not top priority at the
moment.
Right now language list is presented to user based on the locales available in
the system (e. g. those chosen via 'dpkg-reconfigure locales' for example). Those
might be unsupported by available tails-greeter translations. And vice-versa: there
might be tails-greeter translation which doesn't correspond to any system locale.
Those situations got to be carefully tested and handled gracefully.
Current implementation uses subprocess' calls to run locale generation from
autologin widget - it should be moved to upper layer - to the greeter itself: it will
be easier to incorporate other widgets this way.
There are several ways to obtain list of supported locales in
gdm/gui/simple-greeter/gdm-languages.c (including locale.alias file, gdm's
locale-archive and system-wide locale-archive). Similar logic should be incorporated
into tails-greeter. It's worth investigating if it's feasible to engage gdm code
using ctypes for example.
Near-future plans
- Complete .iso build and tests, push new tails-greeter.deb if the tests are
successful.
- Investigate things listed in 'problems' section above
- Implement plans for next week #7
Additional notes
Right now language choice is applied only after user have pressed 'forward'
button - it would look nicer if it's done immediately upon selection.
Language list should contain language's own name (e. g. 'Русский' for 'Russian')
instead of current 2-letter code.
Those should be included into plans for some of the upcoming weeks.
cheers,
Max.
