Re: stock internationalizations?

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim styx net>]

/ Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:

> The great advantage of stock internationalization IMHO is that once a
> program uses S.I., it is automatically translated into a new language
> when the S.I. lib is translated into a new language.

> The downsides of S.I. is mainly integration into GNOME-- how?  The stock
> strings provided would need to be descriptive enough to provide enough
> information to the user, but general enough (or common enough) to be
> included in a library.

> For example, "disk full" would be a bad candidate for an S.I. lib.  It
> doesn't communicate enough context.  A more complete message would be
> closer to
> "Unable to save desktop settings to %s.  Reason:  Disk full."

This idea isn't bad. A word of caution, however. I remember the old days with
Windows 3.0 and the like, where there were stock strings you were supposed to
use for things like OK/Cancel buttons on requesters, etc. The result was that
programs that weren't customized looked like they'd been designed by a
violently confused bilingual, since the general header of the requester and the
buttons were in the language Windows was installed in, and the rest either in
English, or in whatever other language the software author thought passed for
appropriate.

So I think perhaps there should be a strong reccomendation in the Gnome GUI and
a mechanism to let the prorgammer use stock strings only if the whole program
is I18Nable to the wanted language, if not, everything should fall back to
(through, perhaps?) the defaults. So that Norwegian stock strings would only be
used if the programmer has supplied a catalog file to I18N the rest of the
program to Norwegian. That would solve the hodge-podge problem.

-- 
   Joakim Ziegler - styx art director - joakim@styx.net
FIX sysop - FIXmud admin - FIDEL developer - Freehive admin