Re: [Nautilus-list] name and location of Scripts folder (was Re: skript folder translation)

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Darin Adler wrote:
> But I do want to quickly check with others on the list. Is there a
> consensus that directory names should never be translated, even
> user-visible ones?

My take on this:

1) Anything the user sees should be translated and localized for his or
her locale
2) The user should be able to easily switch locale without problems

Statement 2) is usually done by the user switching an environment
variable and restarting one or more applications to make the changes
take affect. You don't know what the previous locale was, so this
basically rules out making locale-dependant changes to the file system
by adding symlinks or changing directory names or file names. So:

	3) The files and directories on disk must stay the same,
	   regardless of locale

This is different from Windows for example, where names for the common
folders are translated, but, after all, you don't switch locales in
Windows.

So statements 1, 2, and 3 is what we got. This can be done several ways:

* Use translated names for files and folders on disk, and keep them that
way forever. You create the file/folder with a localized name on disk
and save a reference to it in the configuration, and use that
file/folder even if the user switches locale later on.
I think this is ugly. Software packages (with popular Nautilus scripts
for example) would have to parse the configuration to know where to
install the files... ugly package scripting! 

* Do not use translated named for files and folders on disk, but display
them translated. I think this is the best solution.


Christian


I'm tired, so please bare with me...