Bug 55379

Dup of http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51245 ? 

no, this is about translations and locale settings in general, not about keyboard 
maps. they're logically related, but not technically. 

This issue may be the one I look for.

I was looking for the possibility to switch language in a login/session.
Apply change on KDE Bartask and Help.

Example :
I have a computer with mandrake with KDE 3.1.
My aunt also use my computer.
I read French, but my aunt has difficulties with french language, she prefers 
simplified chinese.

*** Bug 92270 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 94283 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 102624 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

cc-ing sander for his Bug 63804.

i'm still not sure how exactly this should behave.
- this should affect both kdm and the started session. however, this implies that we can't just set the language - at least, we have to consider the country/region setting as well. i suppose ...
- the list can be very short (see sander's suggestion), but also huge. how to deal with it?
- how to name the entries? consider that they might be presented to a user that speaks no english word. one option would be presenting every entry in the language it represents. the other option would be using the currently selected language, but putting a flag of the country the language comes from along with it - not sure this would work very well.
- considering the completely english-illiterate, how to make the feature obvious? put a button with a flag (which one?) somewhere (where?) in the greeter?

some ideas:
* show only language which are installed (this might shorten the list)

* IMHO it should be a matrix (not a list which might be longer and not fit on the screen) of login buttons for every language installed with the login text in every language.

* not only language, but also country etc must be set, the settings for country, time zone etc have to be choosen in a second step, because they are not necessaryly linked to the language. (a shortend setupwizzard)

* all installed language entries (some 60) from somthing like $KDEHEAD/share/applications/kde/kcmlaunch.desktop + Flag which might be political incorrect (Switzerland might have more than 4 flags to represent all langauges spoken there, arab language - which country?).

> (Switzerland might have more than 4 flags to represent all langauges spoken there
>
they have no "own" language (afaik), so the flag would not appear at all.

> arab language - which country?
>
that's, indeed, a problem. maybe invent a flag with a camel in the desert. har har.

>> i'm still not sure how exactly this should behave. 
>> - this should affect both kdm and the started session. however, this implies that we can't just set the language - at least, we have to consider the country/region setting as well. i suppose ... 

Two people using the same PC should be in the same country. Language choice is a bare minimum choice, that at least enables the user to Log-in and use the PC, and do any other settings, as required by the KDE menus etc. 

However, maybe we also need to provide a way to switch the keyboard? What if passwords were set using some other language? 

>> - the list can be very short (see sander's suggestion), but also huge. how to deal with it? 
>> * show only language which are installed (this might shorten the list) 
>> * IMHO it should be a matrix (not a list which might be longer and not fit on the screen) of login buttons for every language installed with the login text in every language. 

We need not take ALL the languages installed on the system, in most cases, distributions come with a big set of languages, and a PC that needs to be used in a multilingual environment, will just need a very small subset. 

This can be setup in the kdmrc setup file, 

Currently we Have 
Language=en 

Maybe, we can change to 
Language=de,fr,en,it 
(for example, in Switzerland)

If we have >1 languages defined in kdmrc, KDM could display a small dropdown. Else, it displays everything in the defined language, and the dropdown remains hidden. 

It is upto various distribution providers, and Administrators (like Cyber cafe guys) to tweak this for their target audience. Maybe someone can add all the languages to this list, and some would like this list to just have the languages relevant in his/her scenario. 

>> - how to name the entries? consider that they might be presented to a user that speaks no english word. one option would be presenting every entry in the language it represents. 

I think that is the best, simplest and safest option. In language choice screens, it is VERY IMPORTANT that we display the languge names in the language itself as well. (ever accidentally changed your cellphone language to Arabic or Japanese?!! ;-) ). If I just speak a language with a non-latin alphabet, like Chinese, I wouldnot be able to read the string "Chinese" written in English. 

>> the other option would be using the currently selected language, but putting a flag of the country the language comes from along with it - not sure this would work very well. 

Switzerland, Canada, India, UK, Singapore, Algeria are some countries with mutliple widely spoken languages. A flag in such cases needs to have a recognizable code, or some associated text to distinguish the languages anyways. 

>> - considering the completely english-illiterate, how to make the feature obvious? put a button with a flag (which one?) somewhere (where?) in the greeter? 

I think just a visual code for the dropdown entry point is sufficient. An english-illiterate would not be able to locate a "Select Language" string. But, we can easily teach the user to click on the visual symbol, (a globe, for example). 

GDM already has this feature. They use a flag. 

Yes, this feature is very needed for me as well. I wrote an ugly replacement with a dialog after login which restarts most of KDE once the user makes the selection. Still, the logout dialog remains in the original language.

The computer science department of the local university uses CentOS on their computers. This distro has a login manager that features language selection from the login screen. Really neat, and useful in a multi-language environment.

May be we can asume, that a user, who knows/recognizes the flag (of his/her home country) is able to select a nativ language, which is spoken in his country, in a second step.

BTW, after selecting the language the text of the login window would have to change immediately (as it does with SuSE yast2 installer)

I don't get. Why isn't it possible to have a listbox with the installed 
(or configured by the admin) languages where each language is listed in 
its own language? The listbox might be "prefixed" with an icon as well 
to know what is that good for.

yes the "flag" icon is needed in any case. the languages of the very country can be displayed in the codeset (chinese, russian ...)

if no country is slected, the all languages would be displayed in their nativ wriging, similar to what we have with the fonts drop down in kword.

The Ubuntu installer's first dialog is the language selection, and the languages there are presented like that:
   ...
   Croatian   - Hrvatski
   Czech      - Ĉeŝtina
   Danish     - Dansk
   Dutch      - Nederlands
   English    - English
   Estonian   - Eesti
   ...and so on.

I think this should also be adapted for the KDM language selector, it makes sure that the language can be found by virtually anyone.

I wanted to submit exactly this request. I think it's a must for bilingual/trilingual people.

of course, only installed languages would be displayed in the choice. why would you let the user choose anything that is not installed. (think uninstalled apps in the K-menu)

yes we can create multiple users for each language, my mother in french, me in english and my girlfriend in japanese. but that is not enough. sometimes I want to do important work, and I have no time to fool around with a translation, I choose english. If I am a translator, I want to choose the other language for testing/fixing. If I am learning a new language, I want to choose yet another language for learning. like, if I intend to do various but not work related things, I might choose a japanese interface to get used to it. but If I'm doing something for a client, the client does not pay me to learn japanese. I am choosing english. yet for each languages, I need to have access to my settings, configs, documents, bookmarks, etc.

makes sense?

please.

thanks

I said only the installed languages should be displayed (of course) but you are right to think about a solution in case there is too many languages installed. In a Internet cafe for example. the "guest" user would probably like to choose his language on login ;)

Created attachment 23647 [details]
language support in kdm

attached a small patch that give you a menu to change the language in kdm.
this patch does not include the themable part (only works on the default
greeter)
it uses a static list of languages also (this is just like GDM does it, in
fact)

Well, can be a start or help some ppl who really need language support.
With themable support and getting the languages externally its pretty useable.
I dont think that timezone etc should be imported at this stage, usually you
just want to override the user's language settings at login so that you
understand the interface (while being in the user's timezone). if you want to
change your user timezone you can do that in KDE.

To select the default language in the KDM is very important. And I am looking forward to implement this function. Because when you login a new account for the first time, KDE would create default directories and set the IM(input method) belongs to the specific language. And the most terrible thing is that some applications, for example OpenOffice, read the default language and IM settings from KDM settings, and I can't switch the interface to other language and write down something. I am now using KDE 4.1.2, and this problem can't be resolved also. But the IM settings error could be resolved manually by copying /etc/X11/xinit/xinputrc to $HOME/.xinputrc

Hello, 

This bug live so much time...
That has been done to add this property to KDE4? When we could choose language in kdm by default?

Please don't implement this feature with a country flag.  There is no one-to-one mapping of countries to languages.  Use the native name of the language, and also possibly the ISO 639 code plus locale.  The former allows speakers of that language to find their language in the list, and the latter allows non-speakers of that language to have at least some standard way of identifying what the labels mean.  Example:

Select language:
[ ] English (United Kingdom)
[ ] English (Canada)
[ ] Deutsch (Schweiz)

or possibly:

Select language:
[ ] en_GB - English (United Kingdom)
[ ] en_CA - English (Canada)
[ ] de_CH - Deutsch (Schweiz)

KDM is unmaintained and not used in KDE Plasma 5.

SDDM is the login manager used in KDE Plasma 5. If you still have this same issue with SDDM, please file an issue on the SDDM bugtracker (after doing a search for existing issues first!): https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/