Re: non-utf8 po files breaking the build

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 01:15:48AM +0100, Christian Rose wrote:
> mån 2002-11-25 klockan 00.02 skrev Keld Jørn Simonsen:
> > > > I don't think you should do it, it would create some burdens for 
> > > > translators that are unnecesary.
> > > 
> > > Can you explain this in more detail? What specific burdens, and why do
> > > you think they are unnecessary? Vague comments without rationales don't
> > > help.
> > 
> > I have discussed this earlier.
> 
> Ok, I thought you were to bring up some new input on this issue.

there were new things in it.
> 
> > One ting is people doing corrections and not observing that the encoding
> > is UTF-8, and just correcting it in iso-8859-1. I have seen a number
> > of examples of this in kde, these errors are cumbersome to solve,
> > and these problems are unnecessary, and a waiste of my time.
> 
> These errors will probably always exist, irregardless of what encodings
> we use. There will always be mistakes. But the tools can check for those
> errors and they already do (msgfmt certainly does).

And then people need the new tools. gettext 0.11 is not
in standard distributions yet.
> 
> > Another thing is that my tools for translation, sed scripts,
> > spellcheckers, are based on the encoding I use, and they dont work with
> > utf-8.
> 
> I don't think we should base the future of GNOME internationalization on
> the bugs that exist in some individual's private scripts. We certainly
> need to look at a bigger picture than that.

My scripts do not have specific bugs. I am just saying that I have a
convenient and productive environment now, and I do not see a need to
change it. If it works then dont break it. I have other things to do.
> 
> > To me Linux stands for freedom - in the choice of tools to use, and 
> > I do not see the need to impose use of specific tools when there is no
> > need to. The gnome cvs system for translated files have worked fine
> > with different encodings the two years I have used it, so I see no need
> > to change it.
> 
> Then you are most likely not looking closely enough (which might be part
> of the reason why we have this discussion over and over). The people
> that do the daily development and work with the GNOME i18n
> infrastructure encounter problems with non-UTF-8 encodings all the time.
> The mail that started this thread was just one in the countless examples
> of that.
>
Well, I am not as involved as I would like to, but I have done some
work on gnome i18n infrastructure. I have some more ideas up my sleeve.
They do not involve forcing everybody to use utf-8. Lets see when I get
the time to do more things for Gnome i18n.

Anyway the problem that started this thread was not a problem anyway,
as far as I could tell.

> Certainly, a global solution that would seemlessly convert between,
> detect and handle all possible encodings in all possible situations
> would certainly be nice and the "optimal" solution, but we don't have
> it, and we need a solution *now* and already have needed it for several
> years. Thus, standardizing on only one encoding is the only sane way to
> go, especially since all GNOME translators already have to do it anyway,
> most people don't report any problems at all with using it, and those
> who do only report minor personal inconveniences. And minor personal
> inconveniences we have to accept -- otherwise we can't build a desktop
> with new code and new features. There's no way anyone can have developed
> and enhanced everything already so that everything in the development
> process is seamless and perfect. To some extent we build new roads here,
> so you're bound to get your hands dirty and have inconveniences somehow.
> 
> Also, I think personal freedom is an exceptionally bad argument. Noone
> is stopping you from encoding your files on your hard drive in whatever
> encoding or format you prefer. You still can enjoy that freedom in every
> way. The only thing is that we ask you to convert it to UTF-8 before you
> commit it to GNOME cvs. There never ever was any "freedom" to commit
> anything you'd like in any format you'd like to GNOME CVS to begin with,
> so we're not taking that freedom away.
> 
> The decision to use UTF-8 as the mandatory encoding for all GNOME 2.x po
> files has been made. Please accept that.

Oh, well. I cannot move things alone. Probably you will see me not
translating so much, and I think the danish translations already
suffered from that. And then I will be back when I get the time and
things are working better. Eventually I will probably switch to UTF-8
too some day.

Best regards
keld