Re: Why emacs have not native language menu

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <fusion@mx6.tiki.ne.jp>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:23:45 +0900
> 
> I sincerely think the emacs documentation (manual, elisp reference,  
> elist introduction) is verbose. I think the structure is not explicit  
> enough. I think they don't provide an easy access to information.  

You will have to back this up with explicit examples (more than one
for each category, preferably), to convince the maintainers to treat
these assertions seriously.  (The emacs-devel list is the right place
to post the examples and for any serious discussion of problems with
the Emacs documentation.)

Wrt to verbosity, the manual is usually accused of the opposite: that
it leaves too much out.

I have no idea what you mean under ``the structure is not explicit
enough''--the structure of what?

As for easy access to information (assuming I understood what you
mean), the index search command (`i' in Info mode) normally gets me to
the right place very quickly and efficiently.

> And I think that is the reason why we've seen so little translation  
> of the whole thing, even though emacs has been around for a while  
> now. The fact that there is no localization framework also helps: it  
> shows that emacs developers were specifically _not_ interested in  
> getting involved with reaching out to other linguistic communities.  

I think the real problem is that no one stepped forward and
volunteered.  It's true that the core maintainers generally have a
good command of English, and have too much on their plate to make this
their first priority, but that would not prevent them from welcoming
any work on localization--witness the proliferation of translations of
the tutorial and reference cards between Emacs 21.x and 22.1.

Emacs is a project run by volunteers on their free time, so features
that get implemented are those for which interested individuals have
enough motivation to sit down and code them.  There are other
important features that Emacs doesn't have because no one volunteered;
it is really silly to accuse the maintainers of being not interested
in all of them.

> It makes it difficult for translators to have their work advertised  
> properly (even though there are links to some translations), it makes  
> updating the translation a fantastic endeavor.

I don't understand what difficulties you have in mind.  It's not like
the Emacs maintainers are actively interfering with adding links or
advertisement.