Re: Changing the lang by an application

["Khimenko Victor" <gnome khim sch57 msk ru>]

22-Nov-98 01:15 you wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 1998 at 01:39:24AM -0600, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>> > This approach would have several problems, the most horrible one being
>> > that if someone had translated a certain string, it would be impossible
>> > to show that string in any context in Gtk after that.
>>
>> Yeah, you're right. It can't happen on the application level though, it
>> would be a nightmare for apps to save a copy of all text and a pointer to
>> all widgets, just so you can reinsert the text if someone once in a while
>> changes the language on the fly. Definitely not worth it when you can just
>> restart the app.

> what's the point of changing languages on the fly anyway ... it's not
> something like themes ... you're likely to use the same language all the
> time ...

It's NEEDED sometimes. Just a short example from the past: "extended momory" vs
"expanded memory". Usually "extended memory" was "расширенная память" and
"expanded memory" was "дополнительная память" but quite a few programs used
reversed translations! This was nightmare :-(( If there are will be possibility
to take a look on dialog with such terms "in english" this will be great...
BTW I have here few bilingual programs for Windows NT (english/russian) and
there you could change language without restarting programs (sometimes it's
enough just to click on "Russian" radio-button and you'll got "Русский" intead
of "Russian", "Английский" instead of "English", etc -- the whole program
interface will be immideately translated on Russian. In some you should close
dialog or "Apply" changes in dialog. NOONE requires restart.