Re: gdk_fontset_load and font descriptor

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On 11 Jan 2002, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> 
> Am Fre, 2002-01-11 um 15.18 schrieb Christian Marillat:
> > 
> > >> "VH" == Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru> writes:
> > 
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > >  First, "adobe-helvetica" contains only latin1 glyphs, so use "*-helvetica"
> > > instead of "adobe-helvetica" (because helvetica from other vendors can
> > > contain the user locale's glyphs, while adobe's - definitely won't).
> > >  Second, don't ever append ",*-r-*" to font descriptor. This is very bad
> > > practice that leads to very funny visual appearance.
> > >  Third, make it translatable. 
> > >  So we got the 1st variant. :)
> > 
> > Then I did a quick grep in gnome-core and some font aren't translated in
> > gnome-about/gnome-about.c 
> Are you 100% sure translating font names is correct at all? I severely
> doubt it, but would be pleased to be corrected.

 Yes, I do. Owen and Havoc already explained why - various fonts usually used
for latin (e.g. helvetica, times, courier) look bad for some nations like
Chinese/Japanese/Korean.
 
> AFAIK, GdkFontNames are directly passed to X*FontQuery and friends. I
> have already seen gnome-applications to fail (E.g.: gnome-hint), due to
> applying internationalization of this kind:
> 
> gdk_font_load( _("fixed"));
> 
> In internationalized environment, this can cause "fixed" to be passed as
> translated string and will cause XLoadQueryFont to fail subsequently.

 Just put a comment around that line, something like
/* This is font name. If translating NOT to Chinese/Japanese/Korean/other
 * asian language, DO NOT translate it. */ 

 This comment will be automatically placed in .pot and .po file - so the
chance translating people will read it will be much higher and you'll save
your soul.

> Therefore, IMHO, it probably is a severe bug to translate fontnames at
> all

 You are wrong.

 Best regards,
  -Vlad