Bug#1029821: change gnome-desktop's default choice of Japanese input methods for Debian

[James Addison]

Package: libgnome-desktop-4-2
Followup-For: Bug #1029821
X-Debbugs-Cc: smcv at debian.org, zhsj at debian.org, kenhys at xdump.org, yy.y.ja.jp at gmail.com, iwamatsu at debian.org, gunnarhj at debian.org, debian-i18n at lists.debian.org, debian-japanese at lists.debian.org, mozc at packages.debian.org, ibus-anthy at packages.debian.org

After attempting a re-install with Japanese language defaults (to try to make
sure that I understand the problem), I'd like to check some more details.

If I'm on the wrong path, then I'll stop adding further comments for a while to
let you all and others find a better solution.

On Thu, 2 Mar 2023 15:50:22 +0000, Simon wrote:
> When there are patches available for whatever we decide is the right
> behaviour, you shouldn't need to walk through the whole install process.

This is true.  However, these comments seem particularly relevant:

On Thu, 2 Mar 2023 18:39:04 +0800, Shengjing wrote:
> I'm not a Japanese user. But I've been frustrated in the last few days
> of the Bullseye release, when Gnome's upstream choice conflicts with
> Debian's tasksel.

On Thu, 2 Mar 2023 22:07:16 +0900, Kentaro wrote:
> The problem is conflicting with task-japanese-gnome-desktop's recommends.


Based on those, it seems to me that part -- perhaps most -- of the problem is
the 'task-japanese-gnome-desktop' entry[1] for bookworm is currently:

  ibus-mozc | ibus-anthy


So I believe mozc is selected as the first dep-satisfying option during a fresh
Debian bookworm plus GNOME install.  Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.


That conflicts with the default that 'gnome-initial-setup' configures, namely
the 'anthy' input method -- explaining the patch that Yoshino-san provided.


So: regardless of whether we choose 'mozc' or 'anthy', we should try to match
the input method that we install by default with the input method that is
configured by 'gnome-initial-setup'.

(the idea to query the available input engines at selection-time is
theoretically a much more robust approach.. but it could take longer for that
to become available and be tested thoroughly, and as noted previously in the
thread, the default install of GNOME desktop for Japanese language input is
known broken today)


Note: if everyone else understood all that already, and I'm only finally
catching up with you all now, then my apologies for being slow.  It didn't seem
clear to me previously what the core of the problem here is.

[1] - https://sources.debian.org/src/tasksel/3.71/debian/control/#L1462