Re: A system for localizing documentation strings

[Jean-Christophe Helary <fusion@mx6.tiki.ne.jp>]

On 27 juil. 07, at 00:41, Jason Rumney wrote:

> Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>> I think I understand. But you have to consider that as soon as we
>> provide a localization framework we offer the possibility to have
>> something else but English as the default.
>
> I think it is a bad idea to mix default languages. The default will be
> used as a fallback, so it should be English where possible, as that is
> the most widely understood language in the world today.

Obviously English will be the default for English speaking  
communities, Portuguese for Portuguese speaking communities.

Besides, English is not the most widely understood language in the  
world today. And maybe emacs-dev is not the right place to make such  
assumptions anyway. Obviously we have a very strong English speaking  
community here...

> If a developer does not speak English, they could use Portuguese  
> for the
> doc strings originally, but as soon as English translations are
> available, they should become the default, and the Portuguese moved  
> out
> to whatever translation format we end up with.

Obviously this is a fundamental mistake in the design as I wrote  
earlier: if Portuguese developers want to modify the code they  
originally wrote they'd need to refer to a different file to find  
their original comments.

Also, a Lebanese developer who reads French would rather have French  
as the default than any dialect of English.

Either localization is agnostic (ie it considers all languages  
technically equal) or it is flawed.


Jean-Christophe Helary