Suggestion: No more language packs for macOS as they are fundamentally broken

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 4:03 PM Tor Lillqvist <tml at iki.fi> wrote:
>>
>> Selecting "good" languages is a minefield, you will surely annoy lots
>> of translators/native language speakers.
>
> And it is better to have it impossible to install language packs? OK.

Languagepacks are not impossible to install. open the dmg, double-lick
the icon and follow a few steps. People could do that for the last
years, it is not too hard.

>> Both complains of "why do I have to download language xy that I never
>> use/never heard of" and "why is my language not included, but language
>> xy is".
>
> Whiners will whine whenever something changes, film at 11.

Seems I really hurt your feelings when I mentioned that one of your
patches broke signing for me with BUILDDIR != SRCDIR. I'm terribly
sorry if spoiled your mood with that so much. It might also just be
Friday and I'm reading way too much into the tone of the mail..

>> Solving the help-issue would also solve the langaugepack-in-app-folder
>> issue, so I don't see one happening without the other.
>
> How so? Aren't they completely unrelated?

Probably too terse. I meant solving the help issue → installing the
help into a different directory and dealing with what you would have
to deal with languagepacks, meaning handling the different versions of
main LO, providing some uninstallation or similar, etc. So when you
install help to another directory, to me it seems like a small step to
also install install the langaugepack files to another directory
outside the app.
And similarly the current case is that the help files are installed
along with the UI translation (and dictionaries), so they are related
currently, both are put into the .app folder.

> The help issue apparently is that Safari doesn't want to open a .html file from the LibreOffice app bundle (regardless whether the app bundle has been broken by installing a language pack or not),

That's an additional effect of having it in the app-bundle, that's
right. And indeed it is regardless whether the signatures were
invalidated by adding them post-installation of the main LO package or
whether the files were installed right from the beginning.

> and the language pack issue is that installing a language pack in  the app bundle breaks it.

My version of Catalina still is happy with the app bundle, no matter
whether I install a language pack or not (or multiple of them). So
what exactly do you mean with "breaking it" in this context? Just that
post-gatekeeper attempts show signature validation errors? Those don't
affect the usage of LO in any way/having the language files in the app
from the start wouldn't help with any Gatekeeper issues on first
launch.
For what it's worth: I just went through the hassle of creating a
fresh Catalina install, and not only does LO 6.4.4 pass Gatekeeper
just fine, including the proper notarization info (Apple checked for
malware and couldn't find any), Trying to save e.g. to Desktop instead
of Documents folder gives the prompt whether you want to allow it or
not. Languagepack installs fine and I can save as without any problem.

> But yeah, whatever, let's keep doing things as before.

Let's not just do whatever comes to mind first just because you don't
care about other opinions.
Let's first /hear/ the opinions, after all you asked for feedback, and
/then/ decide whether you want to listen or not.
Surely asking for forgiveness is much easier than asking for
"permission"/consensus. You can always go ahead and commit your
predetermined way to handle this and then wait out whether other
people care enough to tackle the problem in a different way. I
certainly wouldn't find that nice to do, but surely saves the
discussion beforehand.

Current situation is ugly, I fully agree, and I only have a veto
against the subset-of-languages solution. I might not like dumping
everything onto the users' drives, and definitely would prefer if the
users had a choice, be it via an installer like on windows or by
separate packages like on linux/mac.

ciao
Christian