Re: Evolution and support for rtl languages

[Arafat Medini <lumina silverpen de>]

Am Fr, den 23.04.2004 um 14:06 Uhr +0200 schrieb Murray Cumming:
> On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 01:32, Arafat Medini wrote:
> > To credit everyone and to be as honest as possible:
> > 
> > 1)did I report a bug? Yep I did, and I also discussed this issue several
> > times on irc.
> > 
> > what is a pointer? if you mean the bug id then here it is: 56693
> > 
> > 2) ok this I didn't do it. Simply I hadn't the idea. So I'll cc the
> > whole to the other lists.
> > 
> > but one point I want to say, the statement in the irc was very
> > unprofessional:"because no hackers use ar locale this is not high
> > priority" how unlogic are these ppl?!
> 
> I think that was probably a misunderstanding.

I really hope so


> I think everyone wants RTL to work properly everywhere because it
> affects a big part of the world. It _is_ a good idea to make a fuss
> about it if you don't think people understand that there are problems.
> 
To clarify my "anger": that was the main problem for me, that the hakers
(with respect to them), didn't grasp the problem...

> However, _I_ think we are unlikely to reject an module from the GNOME
> Desktop because of something important that is not done _yet_. We would
> reject a module if something important can not be fixed _ever_. That's
> an unofficial guideline that the release-team follows.
> 
Ok, I am not a member of the Board ;) so I will not say what is good or
not for gnome. The problem simply boils to: the is a REALLY old bug, and
the app is unusable for a big protion of potential users in the world,
and a reall big portion only because some  3 patches or maybe 5 or not
in. 
I mean we all know how important evo (and at the end those hackers
worked to make as it is today) still where I see the NEED to go and work
on is in the fact that this is not a simple bug or two that need fixing
but it is like (as said before) you ship an app which is basically
unusable.
Hopefully it will get fixed, but here comes the second point (or more
the POINT...) if I ask for it to get fixed and I get the answer that it
will not, at least not in the coming 4 to 5 years (maybe I understood
something wrong as they didn't directly say : "we will fix it after 5
years...") But if you feel something like that you simply panic. Well at
least I panic.


> For instance, epiphany had (and maybe still has) bad support for
> accessibility. But it was accepted because we know it can be done
> sometime - we are time-based, not feature-based.
> 

With respect to every one needing accessibility tools, but when making
pcs you serve a group of ppl and then a larger group etc...
I mean Arabic support or rtl support is very new, when I was using gnome
1.2 on my machine no one would think about running the thing with rabic
scripts this was utopic, but today the discussion is not only Arabic
menus or dialogs but rtl!!! So, is accessibility important? yep, but I
think now came the time of rtl scripts to get good support and I think
apps need to have this before ATK or gnopernicus support (with respect
to them) cz when gnome started I thought getting a decent Desktop is for
now (for that time) more imporant the arabic menus & rtl interfaces...

> Another example: New modules are often not fully translated, or don't
> mark their strings for translation, but we don't reject them because of
> that, because it can be fixed.
> 
Here is my simple problem: is the apps partially screwed? look at gedit
or gnome-media,etc.. I have the same stance on this: libonoboui draws
the icon bar falsly BUT I say hey no problem, I reported a bug report if
it gets fixed for 3.0 then no problem cz the stuff works...
But if gedit would be totally screwed I would for sure also scream
against it... As I am doing against Evo now...

> Of course if module needs lots of work in lots of areas then it wouldn't
> meet our minimum quality requirements. There is sometimes disagreement
> about what those minimum requirements are.

I think now we are in a stituation where rtl support is something
important. I am a gnome FAN, not only user but a real fan, from 1.2 till
today, I wouldn't have agreed with anyone screaming about Arabic
language support when 1.4 came out.
But now gnome is mature, Linux spreads and some gulf states will want to
use this thing, and if we don't have good software we will be discarded,
It's as simple as that.

yours
Arafat

>  
> -- 
> Murray Cumming
> www.murrayc.com
> murrayc@murrayc.com
> 
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