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Original mailing list thread

Date & Time Panel in Fedora 15 Control Panel

Idea for Time Entry filtering possible TZs

Issues

Today I was looking at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=624158; part of that bug involved creating a locale mapping file in initscripts; this seemed like a bad idea. When considering that, I thought of lang-table, and wondered 'how could we get rid of that'.

Summary of Issues

multiple locale/location screens
no auto-detection
anaconda-specific locale mapping files - we really shouldn't be driving off of configuration sources that only live in anaconda.

We can do better.

Multiple Locale / Location Screens

Anaconda currently has multiple locale/location screens:

language selection (custom anaconda)
keyboard selection (from s-c-keyboard, but nothing else uses that)
timezone selection (from s-c-date)
clock setting / ntp (in firstboot)

Needed Localization Info

Anaconda needs the following bits of localization info:

locale/language
timezone
keyboard layout
text font

Data Sources

What Anaconda currently uses

Anaconda uses the following data sources:

tzdata
lang-table (a custom anaconda file)

Anaconda does *zero* autodetection.

Available Resources

Other data sources

Data Source	Includes	Does Not Include
iso-codes	country subdivisions (state/province), indexed by country countries, and their country code languages	languages to countries mapping
localedata	languages to countries (more or less)	mapping of languages to a primary locale/country
tzdata	timezones, indexed by country latitude/longitude for timezones	locales to country mapping mapping random cities to timezones (only specific timezone cities)
libgweather	many many cities, organized by country with timezone with lat/lon with weather codes	cities/countries to locale
geoclue	Maps current location to: country city latitude/longitude	N/A
xkeyboard-config	maps language name to xkb layout (1:n, though) maps country name to xkb layout	N/A

Widgetry

Split-Out Widgetry

Widget	What does it do?	What does it use?
system-config-date	timezone selector	Uses tzdata
system-config-date	timezone selector	Uses custom hardcoded mappings in the code, lang-table
system-config-language	language selector	Uses iso-codes
anaconda language selector	language selector	Uses lang-table

Codebases that don't have widgetry split out

Widget	What does it do?	What does it use?
gdm	language and keyboard selectors	Uses iso-codes, xkeyboard-config
gnome-control-center datetime	timezone selecor	Uses tzdata
gnome-panel	location selector	Uses libgweather, tzdata

Widgetry currently in development

Widget	What does it do?	What does it use?
gnome locale configuration applet	configures locale	Uses iso-codes, xkeyboard-config, and more

Proposal #1

On boot, as soon as there is networking available, start geoclue. Acquire location information. Then, feed the information as so:

country, latitude/longitude (from geoclue)
- timezone (from country, lat/lon, geoclue may be getting this support in the future - https://code.launchpad.net/~ted/indicator-datetime/geoclue-timezone-support/+merge/39144)
- language (via ???????, see below)
  - keyboard layout (from country/language combo, via xkeyboard-config)
  - text font (hardcoded!)

Notes:

What if we don't have network? Do DHCP always on link!
It's easy to get a list of possible languages given the country. There's no canonical data source of what to use for the *primary* language, though. We could make a mapping table (ugh), or do heuristics (double ugh).
- text font is hardcoded to 'latarcyrheb-sun16'. We could conceivable have an override for the very few people who can't use that.

We then display as so:

Current settings:
Location: United States         [ change ] [ details ]

If you click 'change', it pops up a selector dialog that either:

allows you to enter a location (similar to the gnome panel clock code)
allows you to click a location (similar to the control center timezone selector)

Either of those resets country, timezone, language, keyboard layout, etc. If you select 'details', (or '>>>', or some expander, to be language-neutral), you get:

Language: English               [ change ]
Country: USA                    [ change ]
Time: 2:33 PM (US Eastern)      [ change ]
Keyboard Layout: us             [ change ]

Then, each of those options pops up a single-purpose configuration dialog. anaconda can either use the gnome capplet once it's done, or roll its own.

Mockups

Proposal #1

Inkscape SVG for all mockups

Luya: Current location should include the city and country similar to timezone layout. Will the region field be highlighted to let users know they can edit their settings.