Re: i18n - Revisited

[Fernando Botelho <Fernando.Botelho@F123.org>]

Thanks for the clarification. I am sorry for my unfair characterization 
based on incomplete information.

I will look for a way to contribute somehow.

Fernando


On 04/27/2017 05:20 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Fernando Botelho <Fernando.Botelho@F123.org>
>> Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2017 13:24:20 -0300
>>
>> "I participated to a discussion here about that a few years ago and the
>> answer I got was "people who use emacs know English (or should) so there
>> is no need for l10n in the UI"..."
>>
>> Sad. There is maybe a billion persons around the world that deserve and
>> could access the productivity of Emacs and lack the language skill to
>> work in English.
>>
>> I recognize the attitude and short-sightedness, I was just not expecting
>> to find it here.
> Beware: you are making conclusions from a single citation out of what
> was a very long discussion with different issues brought up.  I
> suggest that you read that discussion yourself, before making up your
> mind.
>
> AFAIR, the main issue was not as expressed by the above citation, but
> some fundamental problems with localizing Emacs.  Some of those
> problems, off the top of my head:
>
>   . command names are deliberately English, and probably always will be
>   . built-in documentation is partially automatically produced from the
>     command and variable names, and from the code which implements them
>     (e.g., some UI elements visible on display come directly from
>     symbol names, which are in English)
>   . part of the doc strings are in C sources, part in Lisp
>   . l10n of unbundled packages presents additional issues, out of
>     control for the project
>   . Emacs has an awful lot of doc strings, so translating them, even
>     after the other problems are solved, is a humongously large job
>
> The project's position is that work in these areas is very welcome,
> but it's quite clear that a group of very motivated individuals will
> have to materialize in order to make it happen.