It's all the time the same problem: ppl whining like little children about nothing (I don't meen you Nadim). Is mandrake your distro? let them do what they want! Is Arabic not included in MDK? Well it is... And no one REALLY cares about having hebrew in European and American region. I installed many MDK distros on my PC and other PCs and never cared about this... Actually I never remarked it...
If you're not happy go make your own distro. Arafat Am Mi, den 05.05.2004 um 21:07 Uhr -0700 schrieb Nadim Shaikli: > If anyone wants to reply - feel free. I still don't understand why not > simply list the languages alphabetical and simply group 'em as say > > A-H, I-P, Q-Z > > or similar to avoid any political gray areas. Oh well, I think my > point/concerns have been voiced. > > Salam. > > - Nadim > > > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover > > E-Mail-Nachricht/Postfach-Anlage > Am Mi, den 05.05.2004 um 21:07 Uhr -0700 schrieb Nadim Shaikli: > > > > > > > > Kaixo! On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 09:31:44PM -0700, Nadim Shaikli wrote: > > Yiddish > > is native from Europe, but nowadays there is more people > > using Yiddish from > > north America than from the native places in Europe. > > This sounds like a > > dangerous precedent - where do you draw the line > on which languages to > > include/exclude (based on population/usage > numbers, people's requests, personal > > preference ?) The rational is, in that order: - if a language has official status > > or official recognition in some country, then put it under the region that country > > is in. - if not, put it under the region where its native user base is, - in case > > the language spreads outside the native region in a way that the number of > > speakers outside the native region outnumber by several orders of magnitude those > > in the native region, add also other regions > I highly suggest > to simplify this > > entire thing and simply list languages alphabetically The problem is that the list > > has grown too big for doing that; breaking it into 5 main world regions allows to > > keep each region under 40-50 languages; otherwise the whole list could be 100-200 > > entries, which is hard to navigate. > (it would be logical to list the languages > > in english followed by the > native script in parenthesis to have a coherent > > listing). That was what we did previously; but the English spelling isn't > > consistent for all languages (in some cases they are quite different, eg: "Khmer" > > and "Cambodgian"). > > Arabic speakers are also present all around the world, but > > the main > > places where Arabic is used are (west-)Asia and (north-)Africa, so > > > > it is listed at those places. > > Again, I'm not sure about your definition of > > "main" as there are > very large populations that speak Arabic in Europe and the > > Americas. Are the number of Arabic speakers in America and Europe several orders > > of magnitude bigger than those in northern Africa and Asia? Is it to the point > > that almost nobody still spokes Arabic in the Middle-East, Arabic is no longer > > official nor recognized in any country and there isn't any signle Arabic web site > > hosted in the Middle-East they are all hosted in the USA? I doubt it. But that is > > the sittuation with Yiddish, the native speaking population in Europe almost > > disappeared, the few survivors in Europe usually don't speak it anymore. It is a > > quite unique situation. I could maybe remove it from America region however, I > > just think it would make sense. The other special case is Esperanto, which is > > listed on all regions, as it is actually a truly international language. > It > > looked out of place since its neither a native language (I didn't > see 'navajo > > indian' listed) Because I don't have any information on Navaho yet, nor have I > > seen any translation either (there are a few yi.po files). I don't even know what > > character set is needed to write in Navaho, nor how "Navaho" is written natively. > > If I had that info I would of course add support so that people can have > > LANGUAGE=nv working. Note however that Navaho spekers are still more important in > > North America than on any other place. > nor widely used (I didn't see Chinese > > > or Indian/Hindi listed as part of the Americas as well even though > there are > > huge populations in that region). But those populations don't significatively > > outnumber those in China and India. And Hindi is an official language in India; > > and Chinese is an official language in China. Some small languages, maybe Georgian > > or Armenian could be in that case, may have more speakers outside their respective > > countries, but they still have a country where they are official, which means a > > lot of real activity in that language: media (TV, radio, newspapers), > > governemental communication, school, etc. > I again, suggest you > simply list out > > all the languages with no regard to a particular > region else you run the risk of > > conducting such overly silly > conversations that really don't contribute to > > anything. That discussion already took place some time ago (when we split the list > > into regions). The reason is the list too long to be only one piece. It currently > > has 93 different languages, and a lot more would be added with time (I currently > > have 4 not yet listed ones on hold: Berber, Mandinka (both waiting to have native > > script support added to unicode), Furlan (that just started its translations a > > week ago) and Malagasy (translation activity hasn't started yet) Broke by regions > > it is: Europe: 50 (51 with Furlan) Asia: 36 Africa: 14 (16 with Berber, Mandinka > > and Malagasy) Oceania: 4 America: 7 Europe is almost complete, almost all > > official/native languages are already listed. Future growth will be mainly in > > Africa, and a bit in Asia. A lot of languages are still missing; in America region > > for example there are several native languages that are used that would probably > > be added in the future: Guarani, Quechua, Aymara, Nahuatl, Mapundungu, Inuktitut, > > Greenlandic, Yupik, Inupiak, Navaho,... In Africa region there is still missing: > > Tigrinya, Oromo, Swahili, Wolof, Berber, Malagasy, Kiniarwanda, Kirundi, Luanda, > > Mandinka,... and those are only the ones I rember from top of my head just now, > > there are much more. Of course they won't be all added in one day, it will take > > time; but it is not possible to have a single plain list if we want to include as > > many languages as possible (which we want). The list was already too big to be > > usable when we split it, it is bigger now with near 100 entries. A menu with 100 > > or more entries isn't manageable, it has to be split into smaller parts, and the > > five big world regions are the most easy and efficient I come with (a split by > > linguistic families won't be good as most people won't know the linguistic family > > of their language) > PS: what is noted above is entirely my personal > > views/opinions that > have have NOTHING to do with arabeyes (in case someone wants > > to > read more into this than there really is). Now, most languages are listed > > according to their official/native status; with two exceptions: Esperanto (which > > isn't official anywhere, nor is it native anywhere either, as it is an auxilliary > > language) and Yidish (which isn't official anywhere, and is probably the only > > language where most of the activity is done outside its native region). I could > > probably make Yidish listed only in Europe region; Yidish speaking people sure > > know it is a language native from central Europe. > Regards, > > - Nadim > > > > > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Win > > a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs > > > http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover -- Ki Ãa vos vÃye bÃn, > > Pablo Saratxaga http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/ PGP Key available, key ID: > > 0xD9B85466 [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or > > Esperanto] [min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj] > _______________________________________________ General mailing list [EMAIL > PROTECTED] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general _______________________________________________ General mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
