Re: [olpc-software] Scaling and localization in package management

[Jim Gettys <jg laptop org>]

> RPM actually knew about installing only some language data files but that
> was something we dropped as disk space rose and the trade offs in PC space
> made it uninteresting.
> 

Well, it's interesting again, from one point of view.

But packaging all the translations with the code doesn't scale, so I
think we need different approaches.  I went and looked at the relative
size of the translations vs. code size, and if we start having hundreds
of languages, we really don't want all that in a single package, even if
we could coordinate the translations at that scale.

> Far bigger problems occur in the world of fonts, especially for languages like
> chinese on a small storage system, and for properties like lentition which are
> not really dealt with by po files.

Yes, fonts are a challenge.  Our system is big enough I'm not too scared
of chinese (on 16 meg flash systems, the world is different); Bitstream
has a much more compact stroke font format for eastern languages.
				- Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child