Re: Translations of folder names - re-hiding special directories

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

> On Tue, 2004-14-12 at 16:39 +0100, Murray Cumming wrote:
>> Ryan McDougall wrote:
>> > I would like to say that I'm totally against the assumption that being
>> a
>> > shell user implies you can speak English.
>>
>> But this is already a fact of life with the shell. Directory names,
>> files
>> names, executable names and their options are already based on knowledge
>> of english. The shell is a bad UI and a badly-internationalized UI.
>> Adding
>> one or two more folders is not going to make much difference.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Murray Cumming
>
> Do a ls on "/usr/bin" and tell me thats English.

Yes, it's based on knowledge of English. You can't turn English into some
universal Esparanto just by removing the vowels.

> Ask some English
> speaker off the street what those commands do based on what little
> English you can pick up from it.

An English speaker will have a far easier time than someone who speaks no
English. Are you saying that it's better for something to be
incomprehensible than for it to be English?

> Just because the shell is currently badly internationalized doesn't mean
> we should make it worse, and get in the way of making it better later.

My point is that it's so completely broken that nothing will make much
difference. But, in contrast, the GNOME desktop is not broken and has the
chance to be even better. I'd choose to make GNOME significantly better
instead of preventing the shell from becoming 0.1% more bad.

> Directory names in English in the $HOME is precisely what we're
> currently arguing about (any directories outside of $HOME are far less
> relevant).

But whatever your current directory is, your whole shell UI will be
horribly  non-internationalized.

> Maybe you don't care so much about foreigners putting a foreign language
> in your $HOME, but I'm thinking some people would, and I'm speaking up
> for them.

I work in a non-english language, with non-english software.

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com