Re: report on [bad] status of i18n of gnome apps - somebody should explicitly care about it

["Dmitry G . Mastrukov" <dmitry taurussoft org>]

На Чтв, 22 Мар 2001 19:57:42 Vlad Harchev написал:
> 
> 
>  Hello, 
>  
>  Executive summary: most gnome apps don't support i18n adequately
> and are
> mostly unusable or even non-functional for non-latin1 (and sometimes
> for
> non-ASCII) users. This can be fixed by a dedicated gnome-i18n hacker
> though. I
> can (and would like to) take this position if some
> ogranization/company hired
> me.
>  
>  GNOME-1.4 can be considered an advanced desktop environment from a
> lot of of
> perspectives. Unfortunately, i18n of applications shipped with it is
> not one
> of these perspectives. Literally every application and library (with
> a rare
> exception - some of them were fixed - some of them by me personally)
> that deal
> with file formats that are understood by other applications too
> (i.e. widely
> spread formats such as XLS, WMF) or any protocol that transmits text
> (mail,
> news) don't support i18n at all or even sometimes anything except
> ASCII is not
> supported correctly. This means that non-latin users are unable to
> use these
> applications and applications that use such libraries - in the best
> case such
> applications don't allow interchange of data in these widespread
> format or
> using such protocols (peers of the users can't open/use data
> produced by such
> applications and users of such applications can't open data produced
> by their
> peers) rendering applications unusable in networked environment of
> today, and
> in the worst case such applications don't support even basic
> operations too
> (e.g. printing or saving file in the way that won't cause data
> loss)!
> 
>   Transition to gtk-2.0 will *not* solve majority of these problems
> since
> special support and changes in design is needed to support at least
> import and
> export of the widely spread file formats and handling of information
> transmitted via protocols like mail and news (since most often
> textual
> information stored in such formats uses arbitrary or different from
> the user's
> locale encoding). Transition to gtk-2.0 will simplify solving or
> even solve
> some basic problems like typing text and not seeing it in proper
> font though -
> but when it will happen? Just to mention that KDE applications don't
> suffer at
> least from these basic problems and KDE apps work much better for
> non-latin1 
> users..
> 
>   It's obvious why i18n support should be raised to adequate level,
> the sooner
> the better, even if comfort and feelings of non-latin1 gnome users
> are ignored
> (as usual, cough) - just in order gnome to be considered as viable
> computing
> environment by non-latin users/goverments/distibution vendors/
> hackers who
> want to hack on some desktop environment.
> 
>   I think no more than 1.5 month of work needed for fixing 90% of
> all software
> and libraries shipped with fifth toe and gnome (evolution not
> included, fixing
> it will require almost 2 weeks IMO). So I think dedicated
> professional i18n
> hacker position would be a must have for gnome project, and work of
> this
> person will make gnome friendly (or at least working adequately) for
> non-latin1 users. These estimations are made by professional eye and
> brain
> (mine), since I've implemented complete i18n framework for AbiWord
> (now it
> supports even CJK languages without any flaws from i18n
> perspective),and
> recently fixed remaining i18n problems in gnome-print and in
> gnumeric and
> worked on various aspects of gtk dealing with i18n issues.
> 
>  I can and would like to take that position of i18n hacker of gnome
> project
> provided some company or organization sponsored my work or even
> better hired
> me.
> 
>  What do you think about all this?
> 
>  Best regards,
>   -Vlad
> 
Yes, I fully agree with Vlad. Dedicated i18n developer is absolutely
need for gnome.

Dmitry