Re: [Adonthell-devel] i18n improvements

[Kai Sterker]

On 13 Apr 2002 20:44:57 +0200 Alexandre Courbot wrote:

> Ah, ok. So that explains why the environment variables weren't taken
> into account. Not that that's a big problem, but maybe it'd be better
> if it still refered to them in case the Language isn't written in an
> already existing config file (was my case, as I'm an old Adonthell
> player now ;)) - the value in the config file overriding everything,
> of course. Players who already have a config file won't have Language
> set, you see.

Right, that's probably the optimum behaviour. Actually, hold on! With my
last commit we'll have this behaviour back :). Everything is as you
suggested:

Without the config option, the value of environment variable will be
used. Once there is a config option, it'll override all environment
variables.

 
> I also wonder whether the default value in the config file shouldn't
> simply be []. If the user wants a specific language, he can edit the
> config file (or later use the option screen). But if he wants to play
> in a different language, the first action will be to change LC_ALL,
> which won't work. And, flankly, just changing an environment variable
> to change the language is l33t! :)

Hm. Not sure what will be better. Right now if a new config file is
written, it'll contain the value if found in one of the environment
variables, thus overriding any changes to these. If none of the
variables is defined, it'll set the language to en_EN.

Latter should be changed, I guess. As long as no variable is defined,
the language option should be kept empty. No problem with that.

The question is, if we find a language when writing the config file,
should we write it to the file or not? If it's there now, it's probably
there later, so perhaps you are right. We should leave the config option
empty unless the player fills it in.


Concerning the problem with the old config file: I was thinking about
adding a version option, and whenever the engine is newer than the
config file, it would write a new config file. That could solve such
problems as you had.


> Much more than 1000, I think. It's a short adventure, but a lot of
> work already!

Yeah, I noticed while writing those dialogues ;). For v1.0 we possibly
need a few more writers than just Nezumi, Josh and myself. Or we gotta
work even harder! :P 

> One nice thing to do too would be to write READMEs and PLAYING files
> in every supported language. Or, even better, replace useless 'option'
> menu entry with a 'help' one, which would display playing instructions
> in the right language, of course. Compiling instructions do not need
> to be translated I think.

Well, I didn't want to code any GUI stuff before switching to the new
one ;). But a translated PLAYING or README might not hurt. We'd also
need a slightly changed README for the Windows release.


Now let's see. Only need to extract the player bubble text (gotta use a
hexeditor for that one), then I should be through with marking and
updating the scripts. :)

Kai