[Libreoffice] Comments on RC1

[Sophie Gautier]

Hi Michael,
On 07/12/2010 01:10, Michael Meeks wrote:
> Hi Sophie&  Wols,
>
> On Mon, 2010-12-06 at 20:57 +0300, Sophie Gautier wrote:
>> Like some other members of the L10n project, I'm not very happy with the
>> RC1 we provided:
>
> 	:-)
>
>> - the Windows multilanguage installer is really a pain when you are on a
>> slow connexion
>
> 	It took under five minutes for me to download; 8Mbit, I can imagine it
> taking ten times longer on a 1Mbit link, from Madagascar - perhaps you
> don't have a mirrorbrain mirror topologically close to you ?

Well, I may also consider it a progress because when I was in Burkina it 
took me 8 hours ;-) Mirrorbrain does some geolocalization, so it should 
help, but I've download one version today and two yesterday and never 
put less than 5 hours for the Windows version.
>
>> - once you're done with the version, you realize that you do not get the
>> help files,
>
> 	As Rene says, on-line help is coming, and help packs too.

There is in fact two issues concerning the help, the fact that it's not 
available in the package and the fact that it's on a wiki. But let 
discuss this with Kendy and the l10n teams.
>
>> - no spellchecker is available when a inexistent grammar checker
>> extension is provided, so a poor quality shown and again a new download
>> to get.
>
> 	This sounds like a real bug; can you file it in bugzilla and expand on
> the problem ? Best to suggest it as a child of the release blocker too
> (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31865) I'm having problems
> parsing the problem though - we bundle a grammar checker that doesn't
> exist ? :-) perhaps this is why the download is so big.

The grammar checker exists but is poor for the French language (several 
rules are missing) compared to the spell checker which is of very good 
quality. Hence I'm not sure it's a good idea to ship with this extension 
which reflect a bad quality.
But it seems I get the spell checker installed today, where it was not 
the case yesterday. Each installation works well this morning, so forget 
about this.
>
>> I think that we shall consider again the package we are providing and
>> its availability/quality.
>
> 	Well - we are looking again at how best to re-package it. The 'obvious'
> solutions are not very pleasant ones though. So - with only ten
> languages (all of my Catalan, Hungarian, .... friends start screaming) -
> we can cover some huge proportion of our users, and then it is only the
> minority languages that have either a huge download, or separate / split
> language-packs.

I was one who prefers language packs (if you remember) than a big 
version impossible to download ;-)
>
> 	On the other hand - now is not a wonderful time to be discovering
> this :-) The outline of what was suggested wrt. multi-language installs
> has been on the table for several months, and was there in Beta3; RC1 is
> not an ideal time to notice these issues.

Yes and sorry for this. I didn't understand that we will have language 
packs for Linux versions and all in one for Windows, but a separate help 
file for both. Also I was not sure to spend so much time before trying 
(you know the download speed is different on the advertising and on you 
computer ;) I don't make the size of Windows a stopper, but I would 
really like that we consider different solutions.

Kind regards
Sophie