Re: accel should be _accel in UI XML files

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

* Darin Adler (darin eazel com) wrote at 01:47 on 31/10/00:
> on 10/27/00 8:36 PM, Owen Taylor at otaylor redhat com wrote:
> 
> > We discussed this at some length in the context of GTK+, and the
> > what everybody told us is that they _didn't_ want the accelerators
> > translated. (Meaning hotkeys, not underline shortcuts for menu
> > navigation)
> 
> OK.
> 
> My experience was at Apple where we did change what Windows and Gtk calls
> "accelerators" when translating -- only some of them. For example, certain
> accelerators were based on keyboard position (like the "Z/X/C/V" set for
> undo/copy/paste); those changed when affected by local keyboard layout.
> 
> Owen's remarks about a single key corresponding to a letter in a word are
> really beside the point. At Apple, we called it "localizing", not
> "translating", and it was understood to be more than just translating the
> words and images in the programs. The process entailed customizing the
> software to the expectations of the people in each locale, and for us it
> often included changing what we called "keyboard equivalents".
> 
> I fear that programmers are used to English-isms and are thus willing to
> accept this more than the average user is. But I'm happy to go with the
> wishes of our volunteer translators and the state of the art in Gtk and not
> translate these, despite thinking it might be a mistake.

I think one of the issues is when you need to have a Keyboard shortcut in an
entirely different character set.

Lets take Arabic for example...Assume the user has a PURE Arabic keyboard
(I've never seen one...but hey, what if? (also its not nice to assume that
native Arabic speakers are familiar with the English Alphabet)...Anyway,
having an English char as the accelerator would not work!

You would need to change the accelerator to the Arabic key (even if it is just
he the same english key (but arabic letter)).

This of course is not an issue for Gtk+ 1.x (well, it might be for CJK
languages?) but will become more of an issue with Pango/Gtk+ 2.0 

I think it would be more appropriate to leave this on a 'per-locale' setting.
If it is determine that in a certain locale, people are more familiar with the
English shortcuts then it should stay that way. If it is better to change
them, then they should.

Regards,
Ali