[g-a-devel] Are action names localized?

[David Bolter <david bolter utoronto ca>]

Should the action names exposed by accessible widgets/components be 
localized?

The case for "yes":
AT like GOK can just expose the action names to the user as GOK keys 
without having to worry about english user literacy. GOK can build keys 
from the action description instead.

The case for "no":
AT like Orca can do neat things like script for specific action names 
such as "cycle" or "toggle", and provide a better user experience. If 
Orca scripted for "toggle" but in Klingon it was in fact "snarklegruff", 
then the script would fail. Expecting Orca to translate cycle into 
Klingon in the same way as the author of the app widget did doesn't seem 
reasonable.

AT-SPI's AccessibleAction_getDescription should of course be expected to 
return localized strings.

I suppose ideally we could have API:
getUniversalActionName
getActionName
getActionDescription

But we don't. So what should we do?  Note: if we say "yes" we still need 
to solve the keying off action name problem.  If we say no, GOK has the 
fallback of using (a hopefully short) action description to build key 
labels. If I don't hear back, I'll assume action names are not localized.

cheers,
David