other serious problems with non-English tutorials

other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Werner LEMBERG]

[cvs 2009-04-19]

Starting `emacs -Q' within a German locale, `C-h t' opens the tutorial
in a buffer named `TUTORIAL (German)'.  This is quite unfortunate for
two reasons.

  1. *All* translations have this wrong because they assume that the
     name is `TUTORIAL.XX', where `XX' is a two-letter country code
     (or `XX_YY' if language and country names differ).

  2. A language specific tutorial is now loaded into a buffer only; it
     is no longer associated with a real file.  This invalidates big
     parts of the translated tutorials; from a didactic point of view
     it's a bad idea also IMHO.

Who is doing such careless changes without informing the translators?
Since a new Emacs release will soon appear I ask to revert it,
applying the changes afterwards, together with proper announcements!


    Werner

Re: other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Chong Yidong]

Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:

> Starting `emacs -Q' within a German locale, `C-h t' opens the tutorial
> in a buffer named `TUTORIAL (German)'.  This is quite unfortunate for
> two reasons.
>
>   1. *All* translations have this wrong because they assume that the
>      name is `TUTORIAL.XX', where `XX' is a two-letter country code
>      (or `XX_YY' if language and country names differ).

Yes, I'll revert this change.

>   2. A language specific tutorial is now loaded into a buffer only; it
>      is no longer associated with a real file.  This invalidates big
>      parts of the translated tutorials; from a didactic point of view
>      it's a bad idea also IMHO.

I don't understand the problem.  The reason we put the tutorial in a
buffer is so that the reader can edit the buffer freely.

> Who is doing such careless changes without informing the translators?
> Since a new Emacs release will soon appear I ask to revert it,
> applying the changes afterwards, together with proper announcements!

As far as I know, the tutorial code has not changed significantly since
Emacs 22, when Lennart introduced tutorial.el.  We did ask the
translators to update the language-specific tutorials for the Emacs 22
release.  Either some changes slipped through the translation updates,
or some changes to the tutorial were put in after the tutorials were
updated; I don't know which.

Re: other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>
> Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 12:22:25 -0400
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Werner LEMBERG <wl@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >   2. A language specific tutorial is now loaded into a buffer only; it
> >      is no longer associated with a real file.  This invalidates big
> >      parts of the translated tutorials; from a didactic point of view
> >      it's a bad idea also IMHO.
> 
> I don't understand the problem.  The reason we put the tutorial in a
> buffer is so that the reader can edit the buffer freely.

AFAICS, the tutorial's buffer is not associated with a file
(i.e. buffer-file-name evaluates to nil) at least since Emacs 22.1.
It wasn't in Emacs 21.4, so the change was done somewhere in between.
But that was a long time ago, nit just now.

Re: other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> 1. *All* translations have this wrong because they assume that the
>>    name is `TUTORIAL.XX', where `XX' is a two-letter country code
>>    (or `XX_YY' if language and country names differ).
>
> Yes, I'll revert this change.

Thanks.

>> 2. A language specific tutorial is now loaded into a buffer only;
>>    it is no longer associated with a real file.  This invalidates
>>    big parts of the translated tutorials; from a didactic point of
>>    view it's a bad idea also IMHO.
>
> I don't understand the problem.  The reason we put the tutorial in a
> buffer is so that the reader can edit the buffer freely.

For German, say, the tutorial expects that there exists a real file
called TUTORIAL.de (even if it is a local copy for the user), and the
corresponding buffer is called TUTORIAL.de too.  Currently, we have a
buffer name `TUTORIAL (German)'.

> As far as I know, the tutorial code has not changed significantly
> since Emacs 22, when Lennart introduced tutorial.el.  We did ask the
> translators to update the language-specific tutorials for the Emacs
> 22 release.

Hmm.  I have missed that.  And indeed, the problematic behaviour is
already present in Emacs 22 (and it seems that all other translators
have missed it too).


    Werner

Re: other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Per Starbäck]

> For German, say, the tutorial expects that there exists a real file
> called TUTORIAL.de (even if it is a local copy for the user), and the
> corresponding buffer is called TUTORIAL.de too.  Currently, we have a
> buffer name `TUTORIAL (German)'.

I really don't think it's a good idea to have filenames ending with
".<language code>".
I file called TUTORIAL.el would be expected to be an Emacs-lisp file,
and not a text file in Greek, etc. (Yes, I realize there is no
TUTORIAL.el in the current emacs.) Couldn't a dash be used instead of
a hyphen in those filenames?

Re: other serious problems with non-English tutorials

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> For German, say, the tutorial expects that there exists a real file
>> called TUTORIAL.de (even if it is a local copy for the user), and
>> the corresponding buffer is called TUTORIAL.de too.  Currently, we
>> have a buffer name `TUTORIAL (German)'.
> 
> I really don't think it's a good idea to have filenames ending with
> ".<language code>".

I fully agree.

> I file called TUTORIAL.el would be expected to be an Emacs-lisp
> file, and not a text file in Greek, etc. (Yes, I realize there is no
> TUTORIAL.el in the current emacs.) Couldn't a dash be used instead
> of a hyphen in those filenames?

Not for the next release, I suggest.  It should be changed to
something better afterwards.  My main point was that it is far less
work to undo the changes in tutorial.el than to fix ALL translations
(which is quite a lot of work to be done, by many different people).


    Werner