From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Jason Rumney Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: A system for localizing documentation strings Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:03:24 +0100 Message-ID: <46A8C5CC.4030208@gnu.org> References: <795F38F4-7253-47DC-97DD-53BED4F0AB97@mx6.tiki.ne.jp> <3109E7EB-E5E2-49D2-988E-C919334945C1@mx6.tiki.ne.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1185466171 4522 80.91.229.12 (26 Jul 2007 16:09:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:09:31 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Jean-Christophe Helary Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jul 26 18:09:30 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IE5u3-0004Ky-Kp for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:09:30 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IE5tx-0002PJ-Iu for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:09:21 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IE5ox-00066D-PK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:04:11 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IE5or-00063H-8q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:04:11 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IE5or-00063B-3C for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:04:05 -0400 Original-Received: from outmail1.freedom2surf.net ([194.106.33.237]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IE5ol-0000u6-FO for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:04:04 -0400 Original-Received: from [127.0.0.1] (i-83-67-23-108.freedom2surf.net [83.67.23.108]) by outmail1.freedom2surf.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 233B752396; Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:03:29 +0100 (BST) User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.5 (Windows/20070716) In-Reply-To: <3109E7EB-E5E2-49D2-988E-C919334945C1@mx6.tiki.ne.jp> X-detected-kernel: Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:75583 Archived-At: Jean-Christophe Helary wrote: > The fact that the code (.el) will only contain the English string > defeats one of the purposes of the localization. > > If I read code and I need to check a separate file all the time to see > what the French says then I loose a huge amount of time. Conversely, if I am reading the code for a short function, and cannot see the documentation at the same time as the code because there are 15 translations in between causing the small function definition to take up more than one screen, then I lose a huge amount of time. If you are primarily interested in the documention, you will be using describe-function anyway. If you are primarily interested in the code, you don't want an excessive amount of inline documentation getting in the way. > I think (but I may be wrong) that you consider anything that is not > English as "translations" and English as a gold standard. That is the way it must be for any globally used software. Perhaps as a Frenchman living in Japan you feel that is unfair, but the fact is that English is the most widely understood language there is. > It is important to _not_ think that way to be able to offer the most > flexible framework possible. I think flexibility in this regard is important for translators, but not for end users. So rather than a primative system where translators look at the code, and write their translations from there, we should come up with either a special mode to make it easy for translators to enter translations while looking at the documentation strings in a particular language (which need not be English), or a set of export and import functions for interacting with existing tools for translation.