Hey Guys,
So this is the final comments I am going to have on this subject till
post-Preview since this
is sucking up to much valuable bug fixing time on my part.
1. The use of mnemonics as it relates to localization is not ideal.
However,
mnemonics in strings are the "accepted" way. So I would like to
do some research
to see how other projects handle the issue in regards to l10n.
2. "Dashboard" and "Triage" can appear in the Chandler.pot as long
as we provide the correct context (comments) to prevent incorrect
literal localizations.
3. Branding and localization are separate feature sets. A French version
of Chandler is a French version of Chandler. If we want to
provide branding abilities in 0.7.1 we should isolate it from the
localization module and provide an alternate means of changing
"Chandler", "Open Source Applications Foundation", etc.
-Brian
On Jul 25, 2007, at 10:38 AM, Heikki Toivonen wrote:
Brian Kirsch wrote:
On Jul 25, 2007, at 8:44 AM, Heikki Toivonen wrote:
I think there is some misunderstanding here. I just tried this
with the
Swedish localization, and it works. Here's what I did: I unzipped
the
sv.egg, Changed translated string in the .po file (&Arkiv for &File
menu) and installed it. Pressing Alt+A opens the Arkiv menu just
fine,
even though the English original &File does not even have letter A.
My point was that having the "shortcut" in the string forces the
localizer to
have to use a letter in string for that "shortcut". What if &F was
the
standard way
to access the file menu item in a specific locale yet the letter
"F" was
not in the
translated word for "File"?
By having the "shortcut" in the string we are limiting
localizers ability to provide the best user experience for that
locale.
No. The mnemonic MUST be part of the string. That is the way it is
done.
You can't have Alt+F open the &Tiedosto menu for a Finnish language
application. This has been the standard as long as I have been
programming, so I am somewhat curious where the need to do something
different comes from...
These mean something in the English language, something that is
related
to the original meaning of the word and the function in Chandler. I
think localizers need to find reasonable equivalents in their
languages
for these important terms. If they don't get translated, these
things
will stand up like a sore thumb in a localized Chandler, and make it
harder for people who don't know English to use the application.
Let me
put it this way: what would you think if your email application
had a
button that said "Get 汉语/漢語" instead of "Get Mail"?
That is really not a fair comparison.
I don't see how that is not a fair comparison. When email was
invented,
the developers had to decide on terminology. They decided to call
these
bits "electronic mail". And people who translated that to different
languages chose to translate the terms as well, not use them as is.
It is the same thing with us. We have somewhat innovative concepts in
Chandler and had to come up with descriptive terms for them. It makes
perfect sense for localizers to come up with equivalent terms.
Do we localize the word "Chandler" or "Open Source Application
Foundation"?
These are names, and names are typically not translated. However,
like I
explained in an earlier message, these are really part of branding,
and
there are situations where rebranding makes sense. For some famous
examples, you can think about Mozilla rebranded as Netscape, and
Firefox
rebranded as Iceweasel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel).
Yup that is why I am advocating not using mnemonics in strings if
we can
come up
with a better solution. Like I said I would need to do some Wx
research but
I imagine there is a easy way to assign a "shortcut" to a widget
in code
that
does not have to correlate to the widget string label.
With the addition of translator comments in Python code (0.7.1) we
could
provide context in the Chandler.pot as to which "shortcut" applies to
which action / msgid.
This also eliminates having three different definitions of the
same string
in our Chandler.pot just because a different mnemonic is assigned
for each.
I believe it would be a bad idea to do something unusual with
mnemonics.
There is a long history of how they are used, and we should just
follow
suit.
Getting back to the three definitions (which is a real use case in
our
Chandler.pot),
what if the translated string only had two letters?The Swedish
word for
"New" is "Ny".
If you need three different mnemonics and you only have two
letters then
you have
reach a quagmire :)
That is the way it is with mnemonics.
--
Heikki Toivonen
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