Hi, I am trying to learn more about Sailfish before I try to install it or buy a development phone.
I note that there is currently no en_ie locale, and it is something I would be ok with contributing but I have a general question on the integration of these.
I understand they must be installed separately, but will this happen in the setup process or I would have to pick UK or US initially and then change later?
As I am from neither the US or the UK, being presented with a setup screen that says this phone is primarily aimed at those markets is not a good user experience.
Is there scope for manufacturers shipping phones to a market such as Ireland in the future to easily and cheaply tailor the default languages for the markets they are shipping to in order to reduce the poor first impressions?
When you turn on SFOS the first time it asks for language. I think that’s simple and adequate.
If you would like to work on en_ie just ask @Keto (IIRC) and he will create it if it’s not already there.
Fair enough, it’s not something I would have believed, but then I’m British not Irish.
When an SFOS device first boots, you choose your language, that’s it. To me, English is English, whether you come from Wales or Scotland and all those people I’ve met while travelling, speak English, including my few visits to Ireland, where I understood everyone and they understood me. I understand some people local from Ireland/Scotland/Wales use Gaelic.
Looking at translations for SFOS, I’ve found the translation page for Irish users, it is 0% complete, so yeah, maybe you can help out with that; Irish community | Sailfish OS Localisation
If you only pick English I am wondering about the impact on currency display, measurement systems, keyboard etc. If my expectation is English, metric, euro, euro symbol available on keyboard for example will I understand that I will be able to get things set up like this as a non technical user. If you only ask for the language and there is a later prompt to set up the rest then I imagine that could work. If however I have to pick from a couple of locales such as English UK and English US then this does not provide a great experience or a great first impression for a large percentage of the English speaking world.
It is interesting that American companies do so much better when it comes to localisation than European companies. You would think it would be the other way around.
Ah, interesting. So it knows nothing about the country of the user? Only the language?
On Android by default the browser can sometimes inherit the locale of the system. In this case it would be just ‘en’ instead of ‘en_us’ or ‘en_ie’?
To some extent that’s what I am worried about. The average phone user knows what country they are from and what language they can read; and they have expectations about the way currencies, numbers, units of measurement and keyboards are shown to them. They don’t actually know what a locale is and don’t know how to configure things to that level. They also don’t typically use Linux. They use Android and Microsoft Windows (and Apple equivalents). When they use these, they are are initially asked what country and language they prefer and the operating system does its best to set things up in a way that works for them.
I would like to switch to European alternatives as much as possible but I don’t want to jump into contributing to something if it is not something I would feel happy about recommending to others.