From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Possible change to startup.el Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:40:50 +0100 Message-ID: References: <01c52e9b$Blat.v2.4$7aa88440@zahav.net.il> <200503220815.RAA00893@etlken.m17n.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1111493704 21599 80.91.229.2 (22 Mar 2005 12:15:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 12:15:04 +0000 (UTC) Cc: eliz@gnu.org, Kenichi Handa , emacs-devel@gnu.org, ttn@glug.org, miles@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 22 13:15:03 2005 Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DDiGQ-0000eq-TG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:13:46 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DDiXi-00034a-Fg for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:31:30 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1DDhoX-0000Q5-Uf for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 06:44:50 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1DDhiH-0007x9-1c for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 06:38:26 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1DDhaq-0006tI-0A for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 06:30:43 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.164] (helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1DDgoq-0007iq-FZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 05:41:04 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lola.goethe.zz) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1DDgop-0001eb-Hv; Tue, 22 Mar 2005 05:41:03 -0500 Original-To: snogglethorpe@gmail.com In-Reply-To: (Miles Bader's message of "Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:27:50 +0900") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux) 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 X-MailScanner-To: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:34952 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:34952 Miles Bader writes: > On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:15:35 +0900 (JST), Kenichi Handa wrote: >> > If you've got flag icons, then it could be "in LANGUAGE (FLAG)" for >> > even more super-standout appeal... >> >> What kind of flag do you mean? If you mean "national flag", >> I think it's a very bad idea. > > Why? Well, I googled for flag icons, and there has been quite some uproar on the Gnome list about that. For one thing, it is rather annoying for multi-lingual states since they don't have a flag for every language. And it may also be annoying to, say, the Swiss who get to see flags of a bunch of different nations for the languages they speak themselves. For another, distributing any product in mainland China with a Taiwanese flag is prohibited seemingly. In short, it appears that flags are, apart from the mismatch between state and language, loaded with connotations that the more naive under us (like I am) are not able to fathom easily. Sigh. So I'd second the suggestion to translate the current locale into a string, maybe something like hands-on tutorial (in Bulgarian and more). Wait, wouldn't it be more friendly to make this "Deutsches Tutorial zum schnellen Erlernen von Emacs" if we are doing a translation for the splash screen? (Cogs turn). While we are at it, we should offer the locale-identified national tutorial "Deutsches Tutorial" as the top menu entry in "Help", letting "other languages" follow behind (however, that would strongly that we can be reasonably sure that the menus will support the charset corresponding to the current locale. We'd still have a menu entry for "Tutorial (many languages)" as a fallback, so if occasionally junk gets displayed, this will not be a total catastrophe, but it better not crash). And, uh, splash screen. We are talking about 30 lines of text here. I think we have a _significantly_ increased chance of jogging people's attention to available Emacs resources if we translate the whole splash kaboodle into the 15 languages or so that are involved here. If people agree that this might be a good idea, I'd volunteer for German. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum