Description of problem: The Mageia Boot Menu is partly in English, even on a French system (see screenshot attached). Would it be possible to have this very first screen fully written in the user's preferred language? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): I think this depends on grub2-mageia-theme Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start your computer, or look at the screenshot attached ;)
Created attachment 11501 [details] Mageia Boot Menu partly translated The two bottom lines are in English: “Select an item with the arrow keys and press Enter to boot. Press ‘c’ for command line, ‘e’ to edit. They should be in the system language.
Thank you for pointing this out; the screenshot is helpful (a picture is worth a thousand words). My own system is configured for a non-English language; it has never occurred to me that the boot menu could be other than English. But of course we do know the system language when generating it. I just installed Grub2 with graphical menu to see - and it is all English. So it is just a question of partial (Sebastian) or missing (me) translation. I am surprised this has not been raised before. Bug 10119 is the nearest I could find (but not a duplicate). Both grub2 and gfxboot (unsure which is the right package) have no obvious maintainer, so assigning this globally; CC'ing Martin as savant in this area.
Source RPM: grub2-mageia-theme-2.02.0-15.mga7 => grub2-2.02.0-15.mga7.src.rpm, gfxboot-4.5.47-1.mga7.src.rpmAssignee: bugsquad => pkg-bugsCC: (none) => lewyssmith, mageia
I added support for translating this text a while ago - see bug 22257 - and the translations are done on the Live ISOs. But I'm not sure how to handle this for the general case - the text is in the theme file in the grub2-mageia-theme package, but the translated message files are in the grub2-common package. cc'ing Barry, who is the main maintainer of our grub2 packages.
Source RPM: grub2-2.02.0-15.mga7.src.rpm, gfxboot-4.5.47-1.mga7.src.rpm => grub2-2.02.0-15.mga7.src.rpmCC: (none) => zen25000
Hi Martin, I stopped maintaining grub2 a couple of years ago, and to be honest I really would not have time these days. A template file could be packaged (instead of theme.txt) with place holders for the strings and these could create an i18n translated theme.txt during install. Defaulting to English if not available. I think you know much more about the workings of i18n stuff than I do! Obviously nothing in the file system is available before boot, so this would need to be handled by the installer, or drakboot to do it at any other time. Barry
This is complicated; things are too scattered. "the text is in the theme file in the grub2-mageia-theme package, but the translated message files are in the grub2-common package". Thanks to the previous comment re 'theme.txt', I see that the fixed English header & footer are in *that*: $ cat /boot/grub2/themes/maggy/theme.txt [pruned] title-text: "Mageia Boot Menu" # Informational message bar. text="Select an item with the arrow keys and press Enter to boot." text="Press 'c' for command line, 'e' to edit." If it is just the text (above) in 'theme.txt' which is not translated, I see the point of Barry's suggestion in comment 4. But like Martin's earlier patch, this would be another Mageia special for something upstream. Re Martin's comment 3 and the old bug: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22257#c0 I am in the dark about what exactly does/could/should get translated, and when. And what resources that needs to happen. And, indeed, is it worth it? The only translated line shown here is the "advanced options" one. The only grub.mo file I have among loads of /usr/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/ is the 'en' one. So my English menu is because there is no Welsh (cy) one in the package.
(In reply to Lewis Smith from comment #5) > And, indeed, is it worth it? My thoughts exactly when I first saw this report. I can understand that for non English speakers it must be somewhat irksome to see something in a foreign language at every boot, but it's been that way for a long time without complaint. I don't think the fact that the relevant bits are scattered matters, as this must be handled from either a running system or the installer, where all the bits can be available.
Is this worth it? The question deserves to be asked. It can be asked for any part of the system. The answer given is almost always "yes". This is the first contact with the system, every day. Mageia has the advantage of having a graphical menu, compared for example to Ubuntu or Debian which are in text mode. Moreover, Mageia has the ambition to be accessible and user-friendly. I think a translation of this screen would really be a plus. Technically, I understood that it would be necessary to replace theme.txt by a template and provide a mechanism to handle the template when installing grub. This does not seem insurmountable to me.
CC: (none) => yves.brungard_mageia
I do in principle agree with papoteur, being sensitive to language issues where English tramples on the world. And the point that this mixed-language boot menu screen *is* the daily entry point to your system carries weight. Seeing it all localised would count. <rant> I once had to make a trip to a Paris customer of our ICL mainframes on a Basic (language) issue, and was surprised to find that their real problem was simply that our manuals were just in English; I naively imagined all our manuals would be translated into the few foreign languages where we had customers. I believed that if we *had* provided native language manuals, we would have sold systems for that reason alone. I knew a Welshman who used Mandriva solely because it had some Welsh in it. </rant> I am just concerned here about how much work it would be to fix the issue; and who would do it. It is really another upstream thing. It is already assigned globally in the hope that someone will bite the challenge. I think 'enhancement' is fair, since functionality is not the problem.
Severity: normal => enhancement
I agree that it is worth it (despite being an Englishman!). That's why I did it for the ISO boot menus. It's not an upstream issue - well, apart from the fact that they've never responded to my patch to support translation of text in theme files, but we're already heavily patching the upstream sources, so one more patch is neither here nor there. Technically the fix is simple - we simply create some new .po files containing the translations for the strings in the theme file and append them to the upstream .po files when we build the grub2-common package (that's more or less what I do for the ISOs, except in reverse). The only awkwardness is that the i18n team don't have commit rights to packages in svn, so we will have to set up a git repository for the translations and then copy them into svn. This is a real pain, but it's what we have to do for all the other Mageia software. I'll take this on, provided I can get a sysadmin to create the git repository.
Assignee: pkg-bugs => mageia
(In reply to Martin Whitaker from comment #9) > Technically the fix is simple - we simply create some new .po files > containing the translations for the strings in the theme file and append > them to the upstream .po files when we build the grub2-common package > (that's more or less what I do for the ISOs, except in reverse). Simple? But complicated:- > The only > awkwardness is that the i18n team don't have commit rights to packages in > svn, so we will have to set up a git repository for the translations and > then copy them into svn. This is a real pain, but it's what we have to do > for all the other Mageia software. > I'll take this on, provided I can get a sysadmin to create the git > repository. Great thanks. And bon courage !
Has anyone looked at the way it's done in other distros (if they ever translate it of course)?
CC: (none) => thierry.vignaud
(In reply to Thierry Vignaud from comment #11) > Has anyone looked at the way it's done in other distros (if they ever > translate it of course)? I haven't. I know how I'm going to fix it (because I've already done it). I'm just waiting for the sysadmins to create the git repository (and for you to finish changing the grub2 spec file under me ;-) ).
@Martin We have bootloader-theme, could be this one be used for this purpose? I don't what is its actual usage. http://gitweb.mageia.org/software/design/bootloader-theme/tree/
That one is the theme for grub1/gfxboot…
Should now be fixed in cauldron (for languages where we have translations).
Status: NEW => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => FIXED
Brilliant, & thanks a lot. Is the package name as per heading 'grub2', and will it be pushed to updates/testing? Keen to try. @Sebastian : you too!
It's in cauldron core/release. You would need to update all your grub2-* packages. It should work with both the default Mageia theme and the alternative Mageia-DejaVu theme. Welsh is only partially translated though :-(