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

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Dinesh Nadarajah wrote:

> So what does this mean for translators? Are we better off waiting for Gnome 
> v 3.0 when most of the support will be available to begin translation.

 I think every translator should test the app they are going to translate
under the locale they are going to localize it to in order to decide, whether
the app is useful or even functional under that locale.. Unless gnome had a
dedicated i18n hacker.. Majority of "i18n-fragile" apps work fully only under
latin1 locales..
 
> I work on a translation team that works on all platforms and software and I 
> agree. After having used KDE 2.0, it does indeed have excellent i18n 
> support. What happened to all that unicode based support in Gnome?
> 
> -D
> 
> 
> >From: Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>
> >To: gnome-hackers gnome org, gnome-i18n gnome org, 
> >gnome-devel-list gnome org
> >Subject: report on [bad] status of i18n of gnome apps - somebody should 
> >explicitly care about it
> >Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:57:42 +0400 (SAMT)
> >
> >
> >  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
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >gnome-i18n mailing list
> >gnome-i18n gnome org
> >http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n
> 
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 Best regards,
  -Vlad