Re: flags, icons, locales

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Danilo Segan wrote:

> Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM> написа:
>
>  
>
> > But I think the issue with flags is really just a specific case of a
> > more general issue; icons need to be localizable.  If icons are
> > localizable, then images which are offensive or politically sensitive in
> > a particular locale can be replaced by "more appropriate" ones.
> >    
>
> I think this would be a solution to the problem, but I don't like
> introduction of completely new "configuration dimension" for icons,
> which seems orthogonal to the current icon theme settings.
>
> With this I mean that icons will be configurable with either setting
> of icon-theme, locale or both.
It has to be both, because the need is inherently two-dimensional 
(visual theme settings, and locale settings).

I don't think it has to multiply effort anywhere however, if our icon 
themes can cascade.  In most locales, only a tiny fraction of our 
existing icons would need to have locale-specific versions, so no 
geometric expansion of icons would result.

There are other use cases for localization of icons, and I do not 
believe overloading the icon theme mechanism is any more than a 
convenient hack for doing this.  In the end, localization and theming of 
icons are both valuable.

- Bill

> I don't think sorting out precedence would be a problem (just like
> fontconfig does -- try to get the icon theme [font in fontconfig]
> which is best suited for the locale [language], and only then try to
> get the icon theme requested by name), but the main question is: 
> Do we want to go this far with icon settings?
>
> (And of course, who is going to implement all this? -- it may seem
> that no-flags policy is a better return-on-investment, not counting
> our flaming activities in ;o)
>
> Cheers,
> Danilo
>