Hi all,
On 5 Oct 1999, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote:
: David> two more hackings (text.C and lyx_cb.C)
: David> that allows to see the 'Chapter x' and 'Part #' on-screen in
: David> the current locale as well as seeing 'Chapter x' in current
: David> locale on the TOC popup... and corresponding updated es.po
: David> (1124 messages translated! :) this is probably the only time
: David> es.po will be ahead the 'official' lyx.pot if the patches are
: David> accepted :)
:
: I will not apply this patch since the language in which 'Chapter' is
: written is not the language of the GUI (locale) but the language of
: the document. For example, if I have LANG=fr and edit english
: documents, I do not want to see chapters apprear as Chapitres. While I
: agree that the problem is real, the solution is not right...
I replied to Jean-Marc privately but after giving some more thoughts (while
travelling around the clock) and even though I agree with his explanation
and I am already digging into the code for a solution, I still think what I
did is useful (and therefore should be patched into the main source).
I was thinking about the use most people will give to LyX and my
conclusions are these two:
- most users will spend most of the time using LyX under their
locale if support is available
- most documents created will be in the user's own language,
which is likely to be supported by LyX (or either support
can be created via GNU gettext po files)
I'll use JM's example to point out my argumentation. If I have LANG=fr
when writing an english document, I'll see 'Chapitre' instead of
'Chapter'. But currently I'll see 'Chapter' even when I am writing a
document in french (or any other language). I am just wondering why
english is a better default behavior than the current user's locale. I
mean, if they decide to have all LyX GUI (and maybe all their OS) in
'fr', and for most users, most docuemnts will be written in french,
why should 'Chapter' be a better default than 'Chapitre'? It will be
adecuate for much more many cases than 'Chapter' by statistical use.
I am specially interested in LyX working at peak efficiency in Spanish
because there is a big potential user base in Mexico (which is moving
all their High School to GNU/Linux) that will benefit from LyX
superior document creation capabilities. As these young beings create
documents (probably school related) most of their work will be done in
spanish (and hopefully using 'es_*' locale). I think having 'Chapter'
as default is not better than having 'Capítulo', even if it's not the
best solution. But I think it is a better solution than the current
one.
Now, I am not defending the patches because they are mine. I am
defending them because I did them under suggestion from my 12-years old
cousin (whom I was showing a SF novel I am writing (in spanish) and
asked me why Linux is in english but LyX is in spanish and why instead
'Capítulo 1' it said 'Chapter 1'). Me, I don't particularly mind how
it is shown on-screen if the printed output is correct (which it is
because laTeX takes care of it) but I think it is a user friendlier
behavior (actually not only 'Chapter' and 'Part' should be translated,
but also the 'foot' of footnotes, 'note' of notes, &c... (Appendices,
margin notes...))
I am looking into the possibility of doing this behavior (on-screen
labels in custom language) document language-dependent (although it is
starting to appear a good challenge) and I certainly invite any others
that may be interested in this feature (which is not really a Big
Issue, rather a minor thing for people with little time to the Bigger
things like myself) to join me; but while I/we don't get possitive
results, I'd add the 'locale on-screen' behavior (even if just as an
option, configurable, rc, compile-time; I can change them to fit any
wish) for those many cases where the document language is the locale
language and, thus, they are indeed correct (even if just a hack and
by pure luck).
I think I'd like to hear other developers points of views regarding this
issue. As I said before, it's not big thing, but I thought it deserved a
defense... :)
(please Cc any post to me, although I should be able to check the archives,
right?)
: Could you redo an es.po which does not contain the translations
: related to this patch?
I am sending it attached to this message. It has some typos and wrong
numbers corrected as well, so it's better than the other one anyway... :)
Well, just my E0.02... :)
laters,
d@
PS -
: David> I am thinking whether it would be convenient translating the
: David> layouts in the drop down menu for the sake of
:
: This would be suitable indeed, since the name of the layout in the GUI
: should march the locale. I am not sure however of where this
: translation should be done. Lars prefers po files (for consistency),
: but I think that doing the translation in layout files would be easier
: to maintain (not really sure...).
I have been looking at this... My first thought was using po files as this
behavior would be chosen by locale, after all, but as the dependency is on
document class as well, maybe this should be done on the layout files
themselves... now I see this option logical as well... Will keep on
thinking... :) d@
updated es.po
