Remove all non UK/USA English spell checker variants from default Fedora installation

[Germano Massullo]

All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system packages:
hunspell
hunspell-en
hunspell-en-GB
hunspell-en-US

When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has ~24
different English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda), English
(Australia), English (Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See screenshot [1])
People who are not native English speakers have this list even bigger
because they will have their own language entry, plus others.

Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora
with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to other
hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2]


[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1701536
[2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1858241

[Kevin Kofler]

Germano Massullo wrote:
>  Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship
> Fedora
>  with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ? 
I would even argue for shipping en_US only. It is the default language of 
the distribution. Why would British be any more worth shipping than any 
other language out there?

        Kevin Kofler

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le samedi 18 juillet 2020 à 15:21 +0200, Kevin Kofler a écrit :
>  Germano Massullo wrote:
>  > Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship
>  > Fedora
>  > with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  
>  I would even argue for shipping en_US only. It is the default
>  language of 
>  the distribution. Why would British be any more worth shipping than
>  any other language out there? 
Practically some people do care about original English. And, there is
little to win deployment side, all those spellcheckers share a common
trunk, the only annoying cost of more English variants is their
footprint in language selectors

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Nicolas Mailhot via devel writes:

>  Practically some people do care about original English. And, there
> is
>  little to win deployment side, 
In theory there is: common local names of people, places, and
organizations.  I don't know how many of those English variants
include very many of them, though.

>  all those spellcheckers share a common trunk, the only annoying
>  cost of more English variants is their footprint in language
>  selectors 
Fix the selectors to be multistage.  Select English, you get a list of
variants, with an initial default to that closest to the system locale.

[Silvia Sánchez]

Kevin,

It's not compared to other languages but to other spellings of the same
language.
Why should it be UK/US and not US only?  Because there are millions of
people using British spelling instead of US spelling.  Not only in Britain
but around the world; and many other spellings root from the British
variation.  Unless it takes a lot of space, what's the harm in keeping it?

Kind regards,
Silvia
FAS:  Lailah


On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 at 15:22, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler(a)chello.at&gt; wrote:

>  Germano Massullo wrote:
>  > Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora
>  > with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>
>  I would even argue for shipping en_US only. It is the default language of
>  the distribution. Why would British be any more worth shipping than any
>  other language out there?
>
>          Kevin Kofler
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[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 03:21:41PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>  Germano Massullo wrote:
>  > Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora
>  > with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  
>  I would even argue for shipping en_US only. It is the default language of 
>  the distribution. Why would British be any more worth shipping than any 
>  other language out there? 
+1. en_US the default and the most commonly used English dialect, with
en_US messages often used by people who are not native speakers. All
other dialects are mostly of interest for speakers of that dialect and
don't need to be shown by default.

Zbyszek

[Silvia Sánchez]

British English is not a dialect.  As for being the most commonly used by
non-native speakers I disagree.  That largely depends on where those
non-native speakers are from.  In many countries  "the" English is British,
with the US spelling being a movie/gaming thing.  For many, the default
when they go to school is British spelling and they're even told that
that's  "the only one correct".
Said that, what exactly are we gaining by not adding UK ?

Regards,
Silvia
FAS:  Lailah




On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 at 17:47, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <zbyszek(a)in.waw.pl&gt;
wrote:

>  On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 03:21:41PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>  > Germano Massullo wrote:
>  > > Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora
>  > > with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  >
>  > I would even argue for shipping en_US only. It is the default language
>  of
>  > the distribution. Why would British be any more worth shipping than any
>  > other language out there?
>
>  +1. en_US the default and the most commonly used English dialect, with
>  en_US messages often used by people who are not native speakers. All
>  other dialects are mostly of interest for speakers of that dialect and
>  don't need to be shown by default.
>
>  Zbyszek
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[Andy Mender]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 at 14:44, Germano Massullo <germano.massullo(a)gmail.com&gt;
wrote:

>  All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system
> packages:
>  hunspell
>  hunspell-en
>  hunspell-en-GB
>  hunspell-en-US
>
>  When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has ~24
>  different English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda), English
>  (Australia), English (Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See screenshot [1])
>  People who are not native English speakers have this list even bigger
>  because they will have their own language entry, plus others.
>  
I never quite understood the necessity for all of those extra English
language packages since early Windows versions. I assumed there was some
forced name overlap with locale packages so that for instance locale
"English (Antigua and Barbuda)" knows that it should look for the "English
(Antigua and Barbuda)" language package.


>  Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship
> Fedora
>  with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to other
>  hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2]
>
>
>  [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1701536
>  [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1858241
>  
I see there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem with the GB/US
hunspell-en variants, because they're pulled in as dependencies of
hunspell-en, right? I think your idea (shipping only the GB/US variants
instead of the main hunspell-en package) makes sense.

~Andy

[Dennis Gilmore]

Just like there is many different dialects of Spanish, and other
languages the same is true of English, many parts of the language are
shared, and the most critical part for most people is making sure that
things like Paper settings, date, and number formats are correct for
their location. It is also critical that the local nuances though
looking at what is in place on disk all the other languages are
symlinks to en_GB except for en_CA and en_US

Dennis

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 7:45 AM Germano Massullo
<germano.massullo(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
> All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system packages:
> hunspell
> hunspell-en
> hunspell-en-GB
> hunspell-en-US
>
> When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has ~24 different
English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda), English (Australia), English
(Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See screenshot [1])
> People who are not native English speakers have this list even bigger because they
will have their own language entry, plus others.
>
> Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora with
hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
> Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to other
hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2]
>
>
> [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1701536
> [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1858241
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[Sérgio Basto]

On Sat, 2020-07-18 at 18:45 -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
>  Just like there is many different dialects of Spanish, and other
>  languages the same is true of English, many parts of the language are
>  shared, and the most critical part for most people is making sure
>  that
>  things like Paper settings, date, and number formats are correct for
>  their location. It is also critical that the local nuances though
>  looking at what is in place on disk all the other languages are
>  symlinks to en_GB except for en_CA and en_US 
yes, all others languages are symlinks , therefore aren't useful.
I remove them every time that they are installed, with this simple
script [1] . 
It very annoying Firefox or Evolution offer 22 languages the check
spell when they are really 3 ...

[1]
(cd /usr/share/myspell; find -type l -exec rm {} \;)

>  Dennis
>  
>  On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 7:45 AM Germano Massullo
>  <germano.massullo(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  > All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system
>  > packages:
>  > hunspell
>  > hunspell-en
>  > hunspell-en-GB
>  > hunspell-en-US
>  > 
>  > When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has
>  > ~24 different English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda),
>  > English (Australia), English (Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See
>  > screenshot [1])
>  > People who are not native English speakers have this list even
>  > bigger because they will have their own language entry, plus
>  > others.
>  > 
>  > Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship
>  > Fedora with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  > Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to
>  > other hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2]
>  > 
>  > 
>  > [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1701536
>  > [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1858241
>  > _______________________________________________
>  > devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  > Fedora Code of Conduct: 
>  > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
>  > List Guidelines: 
>  > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
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-- 
Sérgio M. B.

[Robert Marcano]

On 7/18/20 8:44 AM, Germano Massullo wrote:
>  All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system
> packages:
>  hunspell
>  hunspell-en
>  hunspell-en-GB
>  hunspell-en-US
>  
>  When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has ~24 
>  different English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda), English 
>  (Australia), English (Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See screenshot [1])
>  People who are not native English speakers have this list even bigger 
>  because they will have their own language entry, plus others. 
That will be a good enhancement but I would argue that all country 
specific dictionaries should be on their own package. The Spanish list 
is no small either, that the Firefox and Thunderbird UI for selection 
becomes a popup menu bigger than most screens
>  
>  Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora 
>  with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to other 
>  hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2]
>  
>  
>  [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1701536
>  [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1858241
>  
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>

[Robbie Harwood]

Germano Massullo <germano.massullo(a)gmail.com&gt; writes:

>  All desktop oriented Fedora installers install on the system
> packages:
>  hunspell
>  hunspell-en
>  hunspell-en-GB
>  hunspell-en-US
>
>  When a user opens the language list of the spell checker, is has ~24
>  different English options, like English (Antigua and Barbuda), English
>  (Australia), English (Bahamas), English (Belize), etc. (See screenshot [1])
>  People who are not native English speakers have this list even bigger
>  because they will have their own language entry, plus others.
>
>  Since the huge list is brought by hunspell-en, can we just ship Fedora
>  with hunspell-en-GB and hunspell-en-US ?
>  Another option could be to move all non GB/USA English variants to other
>  hunspell-en-* packages as I said in ticket [2] 
There's some disparity between your subject (stop shipping all non
US/UK) and the bug (separate packaging).  I care not for packaging, but
I care a lot about locales being present.  A personal anecdote:

I'm a native English speaker.  My partner is a native English speaker.
We can mostly use each other's computers - with the exception of
anything that uses spellcheck.  This is because we grew up needing
different locales, and (surprise) they're not on your list.  It's a
frustrating and surprisingly hostile experience for the computer to flag
random words that you typed with "WRONG" - words that you know you
spelled right and were completely sure were correct but now have to
question.

We have these different English variations for a reason.  By all means,
make the spellchecker default to your current locale.  But don't make
this harder for the rest of us.  Somewhere along the line we acquired
this idea that "eh, anyone can do work in en_US" and that's really not
true - but it is self-fulfilling.

I would love it if I could ssh to machines and have my preferred locale
present, but we don't seem to be in that future.  We localized,
performed all these translations, and it feels like we want to undo all
that work in the name of minimization.  While we're having other
discussions about inclusion, let's not forget the value in having the
computer speak your language.

Thanks,
--Robbie