language pack installer installs thunderbird

[Alexander van Loon]

I'm using the Kubuntu 9.04 Daily Live CD of 19 April. After the installation I removed all OpenOffice packages, I wanted to use KOffice and save space. Then I accessed the region and language settings in System Settings. I clicked "Install New Language" and chose the Dutch language.

According to the dpkg.log file, this installed thunderbird-locale-en and thunderbird-locale-nl, which in turn probably depended on Thunderbird itself. Quite a lot of OpenOffice's packages were also installed again, as well as GIMP help files for Dutch and English and English Evolution documentation files.

This is madness, why do the language-support meta packages have to depend on packages like OpenOffice, Thunderbird, GIMP and others which I do not want to use and don't have installed? Why does the Language Installer have to pollute my system with junk packages which I am not going to use?

Would it be possible to design a better Language Installer application, which users can trust not to pollute their system? All I wanted was spell checking support for the Dutch language. Maybe the Language Installer could ask some questions for which applications language support should be installed?

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Fixed in karmic (version 0.4.8).
Now, those additional translation packages only get installed if the main application is already installed on the user's system.