> On 24 Mar 2017, at 21:40, Jean-Daniel via swift-evolution > <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Le 24 mars 2017 à 18:28, Jeff Kelley via swift-evolution >> <[email protected]> a écrit : >> >> One of the things that struck me from today’s Apple press release about >> Swift Playgrounds being localized in more languages is this screenshot: >> >> <cn_playgrounds_looping.jpeg> >> >> All of the UI is fully localized for Chinese, except the actual code. As far >> as I know, almost every major programming language and major platform >> framework is primarily English; it’s become the de facto language for >> developers. But does that have to be the case? >> >> Imagine a world where alongside our Swift frameworks, we ship .strings files >> that contain translations of our APIs to other languages. From some other >> screenshots we see that Swift Playgrounds is providing translations of >> method names to explain them, here providing “avanzar” for “moveForward()”. >> >> <sp_playgrounds_stepping.jpeg> >> >> A scenario where Swift supported localized frameworks might see a .strings >> file with a format like this: >> >> "moveForward()": "avanzar()" >> >> Then, in Swift code, whether through an IDE, some metadata in a comment in >> the Swift file, or file extension (think “Foo.es.swift”), a developer who >> selects Spanish could simply write avanzar() and understand it in her native >> language. In fact, if the IDE is the layer that handles language selection, >> two developers who don’t even speak the same language could collaborate on >> code, and names from the framework would appear to each in their native >> language! >> >> Comments and locally-defined names are of course still a barrier, but this >> isn’t new. I know that “mazu” means “first” in Japanese thanks to some code >> I worked on with an old coworker. >> >> This is obviously out of scope for Swift 4, and would require significant >> effort to support, both technically in Swift itself and for those shipping >> Swift frameworks, both inside and outside of Apple, to provided localized >> names, so I wanted to throw this out to see if the community is even >> interested. >> >> There’s just something about the idea of kids all over the world using Swift >> Playgrounds completely in their own language that makes me think this could >> help Swift achieve its stated goal of world dominance. > > This has already been done for a couple of languages and it always result in > the same very nasty effect: It fragment the community. Trying to search for a > method name or a compiler error message in google will returns only the > results in your language. > > This is incredibly frustrating, especially when your language is not English. > I hate having to work with localized IDE and toolchain for that reason. > Extending the localization to the language itself will just make the problem > worse.
Amen to that! Back in the days (pre inet) where localization for Mac’s was almost unavoidable I took the extra effort to order my computers in the US, specifically to avoid having to use localized machines. While localized machines are necessary for some end-users, for me its a nightmare. Rien. OT: I have had this discussion more than once: Me: Why is this mac more than twice the price in the US? Seller: Because it is localized. Me: But I don’t want a localized machine. Seller: Uh, ok. I think I can do that… let me see… yes, it will take some time, but I can get you one… Me: And will it then be cheaper? Seller: No. > > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution _______________________________________________ swift-evolution mailing list [email protected] https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
