Re: gnumeric: Note to translators

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho ifi uio no>]

[Karl Eichwalder]

>   Morten Welinder <terra@diku.dk> writes:
>   > (Who thinks we should make en_UK the primary language of Gnumeric and
>   > make the US people set their locate to fit their dialect.)

I try to write British English myself, but I think the default for the
C locale (and hence the builtin locale) should be en_US spellings,
since most every other application is that way.  The principle of
least surprise and all that.

>   This would be a nice experiment (a little bit confusing,
>   though...).  Lately, Erik Naggum wrote some notes on the use of
>   English and why it's better to stick with the American way:
>   British spellings are obfuscate for no good (my words from
>   memory).

Sure, there are no inherent advantages to the spellings foetus,
manoeuvre, centre, draught, initialise; not to mention the whole
shebang of armour, candour, fervour, flavour, vigour, &c., especially
since rotour would be very wrong.  There is more to it than these
superficial differences, though.  Some well known sources of hilarity
are the different meanings of "being pissed", "a rubber", "a nappy" or
the adjective "bomb".

>   If you want the source code spelled British provide a proper
>   README file; and don't forget to spell check all function and
>   variable names ;)

Ah, nothing irks me so much as spelling errors in variables or even
functions in published API's.  Luckily, I haven't noticed any of this
in Gnumeric.


Kjetil T.