Re: glibc based GTK apps changing languages on the fly

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

"Manuel M. T. Chakravarty" <chak@is.tsukuba.ac.jp> writes:

> > > > For example you go the the "Language" menu and change the current
> > > > language used in the application from English to Spanish or Arabic and the
> > > > application changes languages on the fly without restarting.
> > > 
> > > Wow! That would be so cool!
> > > 
> > > There could be a "Language" control-center applet for gnome, where you could
> > > change the language, and suddenly all your apps would change language... That
> > > would be SO cool... *drool*
> > > 
> > 
> > Cool, yes, very.  Useful, no, not really.
> 
> Especially, if it implies changing input methods, it would
> be extremely useful.  I am living in a Mule-enabled XEmacs
> switching between English, Germany (with umlauts), and
> Japanese all day long...

Well, but you are presumably not too interested in having
all your menu entries switch from English to German
to Japanese at the same time. 

I think that being able to use input methods for different
languages within an application is an important issue
that is quite distinct from switching string translations
on the fly. 

GTK+ in the next development cycle will be switching over
to Unicode which should make processing and output of 
multi-lingual text pretty much automatic. Input is harder
because one has to use the input method services that
X provides, which aren't really designed for that.

But it should be possible, and will be something considered -
if it isn't in the next release, I'm sure we'll eventually
get there.
                                        Owen