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Re: LYNX-DEV lynx internationalization


From: Drazen Kacar
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV lynx internationalization
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 02:55:49 +0100 (MET)

David Trueman wrote:
> 
> We (CSuite Devlopment, software for community nets) are undertaking the
> internationalization of lynx via the GNU gettext package.  I am aware of

All praise GNU!

> the LYMessages_en.h file, but the gettext solution will be more
> comprehensive and more maintainable.  The reason why it is more
> maintainable is that all strings remain in the source, simply surrounded
> by _("....") (_() is a #define for gettext()), so the source remains
> fully readable.  Furthermore, there are tools for extracting the strings
> and preparing a table for translation and then later merging in new
> versions.

I'm writing this message from the Unix host with approx. 7700 users.
Most of them are Croats, but some 5 or 10 percent are other nationalities.
UN staff, Red Cross, various NGOs and God knows what else.
I'm responsible for the installation of certain packages and I'm the one
who decides if Lynx would have messages in English or not. In theory, I can
only make recomandation, but it would be accepted in this matter.

Almost all Croats had to learn enough English (if they didn't know it
already) to be able to use various programs, so it can stay in English as
far as they are concerned. If I translate it to Croatian, it would
probably be more usable for them, but it would become completely unusable
for others.

Furthermore, Croatian needs Latin 2. As you should know, various OSs and
programs use different code pages for this. I'd have to select one of
them and if the user uses some other, Lynx would look extremely stupid
and annoying.

So, basicaly, defines in the source are not a solution. The user should
be able to select his/her preferences in the O)ptions. Or via env variables,
but Unix is a mess here. Besides, most lusers don't know about them, anyway.
It would be impossible to set them authomatically, so it's not a very good
solution.

> We are already part way through this work, so expect to have a test
> version available within a couple of weeks (with a French translation
> table).  Any interest?  Comments?

French uses Latin 1. Lucky them.

-- 
Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

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