Re: use of locale in "ls" again (Re: Japanese expression of date)

[Tomohiro KUBOTA]

Hi,

At Sun, 23 Dec 2001 00:25:05 -0800 (PST),
Paul Eggert wrote:

> It has them, but they don't work.  At least, they don't work for time
> strings in the latest test versions of GNU 'ls'.  They haven't worked
> since gettext 0.10.40 was merged into fileutils (more than 3 months
> ago).  No user has complained about this, as far as I know.  Fixing
> this is on my long list of things to do, but this stuff will be a
> continuing maintenance hassle for some time.  I'd rather spend my (and
> other people's) limited time elsewhere.

Three months?  Which version of fileutils?  I am now using GNU
fileutils 4.1-9 Debian package and I am sure some of  outputs of
'ls' are translated -- 'ls -l' shows 'total' translated.  Will these
translated messages be removed in future release?  Then, I complain
now, though it may be true that since yesterday no user has complained
about this.


> While we're on that subject, I still don't sense that we have a good
> consensus to switch from the current ISO-style format to one that is
> all-date or all-time.  Bruno Haible said that if "MM-DD" goes, the
> result would be acceptable to him, but I worry that someone else will
> noisily dislike whatever alternative format we come up with.

Bruno may or may not agree on the "MM-DD" expression.  I may or may
not.  However, how are you so confident about that people from various
countries will agree?  I am not opposing some certain expressions like
"MM-DD" but I point out that your assumption that people from every
countries can agree on a single expression is too optimistic.  Why
are you sure that there are (at least) one expression which can
satisfy people from various countries?  Or, will you be a dictator?


>> GNU Emacs must invoke 'ls' with LC_ALL=C if needed.
> Emacs doesn't use LC_ALL=C, so I don't understand this point.

Oh, English word 'must' has several meanings.  I mean, GNU Emacs
has to invoke 'ls' with LC_ALL=C if needed.  Otherwise, it is a
bug of GNU Emacs.  Did you think I wanted to say that I was sure
that GNU Emacs invokes 'ls' with LC_ALL=C if needed?


> There is ample precedent for using a single worldwide format for 'ls'
> output.  For example, POSIX requires that "ls -l" must output "FOO ->
> BAR" for symbolic links in all locales, including locales where "->"
> is not an appropriate arrow symbol or where BAR should really come
> before FOO.  Here, the advantage in having a worldwide standard is
> considered to outweigh any locale-specific awkwardness disadvantages.
> There's no a priori reason why 'ls' date formats can't be like "FOO ->
> BAR", outside the POSIX locale anyway.

Yes.  In old days, softwares were not internationalized and no
translations were available.  There are still many softwares which
cannot handle multibyte encodings.  We need more progess, not
retrogression.  Or, do you think less translation means a progress?

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <address@hidden>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N"  http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/