Re: lynx-dev Re: lynx should respect LANG

[Atsuhito Kohda]

From: Webmaster Jim <address@hidden>
Subject: lynx-dev Re: lynx should respect LANG
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 08:11:25 -0400

>   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.

Thanks for your kind comments.  Really I almost disappointed 
with no response.

>   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.

Yes it is really so.  But at least concerning installation
I think it is not so big problem if documents are provided 
only in English.

>   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.

I agreed.  To clarify the situation let me explain a bit.
I maintain lynx-ja for Debian JP.  This is lynx of Japanese 
version in the sense that

- it convert lynx.cfg (with simple sed script) to lynx-ja.cfg
like following;

# Include all the common options:
INCLUDE:/etc/lynx-ja/lynx.cfg
# Now override a couple:
CHARACTER_SET:euc-jp
PREFERRED_LANGUAGE:ja,en;q=0.9,*;q=0.5

- and renaming real binary lynx.bin we provide a wrapper lynx
which do; if LANG=ja* then call lynx.bin with -cfg=/etc/lynx-ja/lynx-ja.cfg

In fact the wrapper does much more tricks but essentially 
it does the above.

But using the wrapper has some deficiencies, in fact, and
I think that this feature should be realized with source code 
changes.

I strongly hope that this request will be included in the near 
future lynx ;-)

Best Regards,                   2000.5.23

--
 Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
 Atsuhito Kohda <address@hidden>
 Department of Math., Tokushima Univ.

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