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

[Paul Eggert]

> Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 19:56:09 +0900
> From: Tomohiro KUBOTA <address@hidden>

> > 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).

> Three months?  Which version of fileutils?

The current test version, for example.
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.1.4.tar.gz
(The "three months ago" refers to when the bug was introduced into
the working sources.)

> I am sure some of outputs of 'ls' are translated -- 'ls -l' shows
> 'total' translated.

That works fine, even in the latest test version.  It's not affected
by the LC_TIME locale category.  It's only the LC_TIME stuff that is
broken.

> Will these translated messages be removed in future release?

I doubt it.

> 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 100% confident that we will not achieve 100% agreement on this issue.

But we need only reasonable consensus on the default behavior.
We should also give users easy ways to get other behaviors if they prefer.
And that's what we're doing.

> >> 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.

OK, in that case we agree.  LC_ALL=C will continue to work.  (As it does.)

> do you think less translation means a progress?

Yes, sometimes.  It depends on the case.