lynx-dev Re: lynx should respect LANG

[Webmaster Jim]

On Sat, May 20, 2000 at 09:46:11AM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> lynx 2.8.3 is internationalized well enough even for ordinary
> Japanese users, thanks the members of lynx-dev team.
> 
> But I have one request to ask you all.  lynx has configuration
> file, lynx.cfg, and so any user can customize important behavior
> of lynx with it.  Perhaps you all would be satisfied with this.
> 
> However for a novice user in Japan or any other country where
> his native language is so far different from English and so 
> who does not know even the existence of lynx.cfg or who knows 
> lynx.cfg but has not enough ability of English to understand it, 
> it is difficult to set up correctly his lynx.cfg.
> 
> So I think that lynx should be able to change behavior according 
> to the value of LANG environment variable, that is, if LANG=ja_JP.eucJP
> for example then lynx should set "CHARACTER_SET:euc-jp" and 
> "PREFERRED_LANGUAGE:ja,en" at least.
> 
> English-speaking people and/or people of Latin character might think 
> this is superfluous but it is not so.
> 
> Consider the case when a novice user in Japan installed Linux or so
> with lynx but he found lynx does not display Japanese text correctly
> (in fact it displays meaningless lines of strange symbols which no one
> can understand!).
> 
> Then he would search information around internet.  Solution is certainly 
> there, even in Japanese, but he can not read the solution -- how to set up 
> lynx for Japanese character in Japanese.  And lynx help does not help 
> him because it is written in English.  And even if some kind Japanese 
> translated lynx help to Japanese a novice user can not read it because 
> he did not set up lynx for Japanese character yet!
> 
> So it is very important that lynx behaves well for any people
> without any set up.
> 
> I hope I do not ask too much to lynx-dev team and I wish to
> hear any comments, suggestions and/or ideas.
> 
> Thanks in advance,            2000.5.20

Atsuhito:

  Thank you for your comments on Lynx development. The changes in Lynx
are from the user community, and sometimes it is slower than one would
like. I have been contributing to the internationalization of Lynx for
several years and know we have much more to do.

  Though we are relying on the Translation Project as the repository for
message catalogs, we can make Lynx a better program by having more help
and install pages. Having the ABOUT-NLS file only in English is probably
a handicap. It is also difficult for me to contribute anything other
than code or designs as I only know English and a smattering of Romance
languages. If someone wanted to host a Japanese Lynx mirror and web
pages with instructions on how to build various flavors of Lynx that 
would be wonderful.

  We have a rich Win32 Japanese version now, courtesy of Hiroyuki Senshu
and other contributors. We need to have more crossover of that code to
the UNIX and other OS versions (IMHO). There are Japanese ports of Lynx
for other free OSes besides Linux (see the archives for the recent note
on FreeBSD, Lynx and security). I'd like to see these different ports
build on each other, rather than have one Japanese Debian version, one
SuSE version, one FreeBSD, one NetBSD, etc.

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