Re: National Language Support Functions

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:03:45 +0100
> > From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden>
> > Cc: 
> >
> > We never made any decision on this issue. Most of the answers pointed to 
> > that GetUserDefaultUILanguage is the correct function to use. Or am I 
> > just misinterpreting to confirm what I said at the beginning ;-)
> >     
>
> My conclusion is different.  I think we do use the correct interface:
>
>    GetLocaleInfo (LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME ...
>
> This queries the OS about the user-selected _language_ in the current
> locale, so it's supposed to be akin to the Posix LANG parameter.
> However, Microsoft have their i18n API hopelessly messed up, in that
> they have too many different language-related settings, their mapping
> to the related APIs is confusing and under-documented, and the
> associated guidelines change with every Windows version (the clear
> sign of the latter is that each new Windows version introduces another
> bunch of new functions that return the language).
>   

I think that MS just tries to adopt to different needs the users have. 
It is not productive to just dismiss the struggle MS have with this 
things. Maybe they are not doing things the best way, but that is a 
quite different matter. We should in my opinion try to do what the user 
wants. There are users who wants to read English but use another 
keyboard layout etc. For example Firefox and Thunderbird agrees on this, 
while GIMP does not. It looks to me that the users have had a much 
bigger impact in the case of Firefox and Thunderbird than when it comes 
to GIMP. Accessibility guidelines are for example followed in Firefox 
and Thunderbird but not in GIMP.

What does GNOME do in this area? Does it allow the user to use a Swedish 
keyboard layout but still have English as the preferred language for 
text to show?


> At least one user of those who reported the results of your program
> (Jason) would be hurt by going to GetUserDefaultUILanguage.  Also,
> that API returns a language that cannot be easily changed, unlike the
> language that we currently return (see above).
>   

Yes, I saw Jasons problem. Could we look a bit closer at this? I did not 
understand the details so far.

> So my conclusion is that we should leave things as they are.  If it
> annoys you that your system brings you the wrong tutorial, you can
> either change the Windows language settings, or simply request the
> tutorial in any language you like, with "C-u C-h t".
>
>