Re: Use of American/British English

[Adam Weinberger <adamw FreeBSD org>]

>> (02.23.2004 @ 1126 PST): Keld Jrn Simonsen said, in 1.3K: <<
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 03:51:20PM +0100, Christian Rose wrote:
> This is then one more reason to use British English.
> As most users outside the USA are taught British English in school, then
> the most natural choice would be to use British English as the default.
>> end of "Re: Use of American/British English" from Keld Jrn Simonsen <<

It's worth noting that en_GB isn't all that universal either. I cannot
comment on what Canadians are taught in school, as I am in fact American
and have only lived in Canada for a couple months now (my secret is
out!). However, I know that Canadians are a lot more used to seeing
"color" than "customise."

Christian's answer was very clear: applications should be written using
en_US strings, so there is no opportunity for confusion. I would not
imagine that Christian is as more partial to American spellings than I
am, as he writes with colours and centres.

Rather than arguing about whether en_US is stupid (the answer is
obvious), I think that the best use of energy would be a script that,
given a source pot, could quickly and easily generate en_AU, en_CA,
en_GB and en_ANYTHINGELSE translations.

Come to think of it, that doesn't seem like a bad idea. If an Aussie and
a Brit want to pow-wow with me on this, I'd be happy to help pound out
such a script.

# Adam


--
Adam Weinberger
adamw@vectors.cx // adamw@FreeBSD.org // adamw@magnesium.net
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