From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Summary (Re: A system for localizing documentation strings) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:11:30 -0400 Message-ID: References: <795F38F4-7253-47DC-97DD-53BED4F0AB97@mx6.tiki.ne.jp> <46A9A6DA.9020908@swipnet.se> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1185631849 10572 80.91.229.12 (28 Jul 2007 14:10:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 14:10:49 +0000 (UTC) Cc: fusion@mx6.tiki.ne.jp, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jul 28 16:10:43 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 1IEn0D-0002WU-AE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:10:41 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IEn0C-0003If-K1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:10:40 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IEmz7-0002E4-4B for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:09:33 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1IEmz6-0002DY-I8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:09:32 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IEmz6-0002DT-9A for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:09:32 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IEmz5-0001NU-Sz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:09:32 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1IEn10-0004bg-5J; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:11:30 -0400 In-reply-to: <46A9A6DA.9020908@swipnet.se> (message from =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:03:38 +0200) X-detected-kernel: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) 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:75748 Archived-At: We don't need that. Translators are organized in teams, and everything uses gettext. We do not want a different mechanism here. Many translators translates programs they very rarely, if ever, use. It would be a mistake to not use gettext. I already explained the problem in using gettext from Emacs: how to decide WHICH .po files to use. In Emacs it won't work to use just one, or even a few dozen. I think this is a hard problem, if we want results that are usable in practice. Maybe it can be solved; I encourage people to look for a solution. However, to argue for use of gettext without solving that problem is not useful. One _possible_ advantage in using gettext is that it might be more efficient in speed and time. I don't know how it works, but it might work by mapping directly .po files into memory (using less space and time than reading it into Lisp), and it might have optimized lookup within the file. With gettext it is probably possible (whether or not currently implemented) to delete a .po file from memory if it goes unused for a while. That would be useful in Emacs; we could treat the in-core .po files as a cache for the ones on disk. By contrast, this would be very hard if we read in the translations as Lisp data.