Re: Accelerator I18N [was: I don't wont the f* underlinings ...]

Hrvoje> One's desire to have things translated to his tongue Hrvoje> should not reduce the developer's freedom to change the Hrvoje> program. Gratuitous spelling changes in menu items will "unhook" the translation (see lwlib/xlwmenu.c:massage_resource_name() for exactly which ones). Shouldn't we restrict freedom at least that much? Oh, by the way. I just generated the XlwmenuResourceConversions file: bash-2.03$ wc sample.XlwmenuResourceConversions 10930 29547 588026 sample.XlwmenuResourceConversions Approximately 5,465 translations. Coming soon[1], to an xemacs-patches archive near you! I'm looking forward to seeing the Croatian version for the hr locale. :-) Hrvoje> That's your opinion. I say otherwise. Hrvoje> By your standards, nothing UI-wise in XEmacs would ever Hrvoje> change, because there's always a possibility that Hrvoje> _someone_ in _some_ language would misunderstand/misparse Hrvoje> _something_. I can't hope to disprove that claim. You needn't bother, because I didn't make it. All I ask is that _discussion_ take place. This serves to (1) warn the translators that they are about to get a ton of hate mail (2) give them a chance to kick up a fuss and (3) maybe cause developers of good will to rethink some planned changes where appropriate. I don't expect that Ben's current changes would have been blocked or even much delayed, drastic as they are. They're needed, including some parts that I will disable in my personal setup as soon as possible. But it is part of my job to kick up a fuss when I18N considerations are completely ignored. Hrvoje> What I do claim is that _English_ menus are written for Hrvoje> people who understand _English_. Croatians, Japanese, Well, your claim is incorrect. Under the current architecture, and in GNU gettext as well, the menu translations are indexed by the English menu. The English menus determine the menu organization for _everybody_, whether they use English menus or not. And typos in the menu items (eg, when adding accelerators) are significant for this purpose, too. Hrvoje> Thai, etc. without proper knowledge of English will fail Hrvoje> to understand them. Well, that's what translations are Hrvoje> for. If that means "fuck I18N" in your book, then you Hrvoje> have a pretty weird notion of I18N. So, yes, changing the English menu without understanding how that impacts the menus in other languages means "fuck I18N" in my book. If you want to change to using catgets, then the English menu no longer has a central role in I18N. But nobody wants that; that would nearly guarantee that the menus would never ever change. :^) Hrvoje> Uh, and the Japanese better get used to Internet not being Hrvoje> IE and Netscape. It's for their own good. :-) The concept of the Internet and the word インターネット are two different things. Unfortunately, the mass media here have preempted the latter to mean "using a Web browser." Footnotes: [1] I'm gonna clean out the duplicates first. - University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."