Re: [gnome-cyr] Re: gtksourceview/po/ru.po: =?utf-8?b?0K3QudGH0KLQnNCb?=? WTF?

[danilo gnome org (=?utf-8?b?0JTQsNC90LjQu9C+?==?utf-8?b?INCo0LXQs9Cw0L0=?=)]

Данас у 7:24, Dmitry G. Mastrukov написа:

>> Кстати, о "Гноме". Вы в курсе, что GNOME -- это вообще-то аббревиатура?
>> 
> Да, конечно. Я специально спрашивал людей, общавшихся с разработчиками
> Гнома. Выяснилось, что рекомендованное произношение "guh-nome" не
> используется, у всех идёт чёткая ассоциация с "мифическим маленьким
> человечком", благо и пятка висит на главной панели. В русском это не
> получалось аббревиатурой, вот и пишется просто с заглавной буквы.

Since I've used „Гном“ for Serbian translations, I feel a need to post
a few explanations I usually send to those Serbian folks complaining
about it (and there are quite some).

GNOME was abbreviation very long time ago.  Once upon a time, in a
country far, far away, there was a website for a project with the
peculiar name of "GNU Network Object Model Environment", or shortly,
"GNOME".  It was the time of 1.* release of that project.

Even then, many people used "Gnome" (as a common word, not all
uppercased like abbrevs) interchangeably with "GNOME", and they still
do that.

Suddenly, with the shift of ideas and goals behind the Gnome project,
the explanation of the name was pushed in the background (first to
the About page, now there's no sign of it anywhere on the website).
So, to all extents possible, Gnome is still a GNU project, but is not
the very least of "GNU Network Object Model Environment", which was a
"forced" abbrev in the first place (and everybody knows that).

So, GNOME has no significant meaning other than it being a cool
name.  And a Dictionary of foreign words in Serbian mentions "гном"
as a special kind of dwarf who guards the treasury, or sort of a
villain (патуљак, вилењак).  And then, there's The FOOT, known to
everybody, and ultimate mark representing The Project.

If you can relate "гном" to the foot (and you obviously can do that
more easily than with "GNOME"), I suggest you go for it.  Losing the
crappy meaning of abbreviation is the last thing you need worry about.
A four-toe foot is more of a Гном representative, than the abbrev.

Even if you insist on creating an abbreviation, you can do it with
ГНОМ as well:
  ГНу Окружење Моћи (GNU Environment of Power ;)
or whatever else you please.  Trust me that "Network Object Model" is
completely non-sensical, and Gnome is far away from it nowdays (even
though theoreticaly, CORBA could be made to do that, not enough
components use CORBA at all, so there's no track of network
transparency).

Another good property of "Гном" is that it is close enough to the
original trascribed "Гноме", so it can easily be recognized (I have
yet to see someone who didn't know what it was about; there very many
*claiming* that it will, but I haven't seen it happen).

Cheers,
Danilo