2010/1/29 Mark A. Hershberger
<address@hidden>
smc <
address@hidden> writes:
> I don't know if this approach is the better one. I always thought that
> Emacs Lisp itself should implement the Gettext way for translating
> interfaces.
collaborative translation that translateWiki enables.
As I can see, the Translatewiki system is also based in gettext, but with
a web interface, like Drupal does. Really, the web interface is not the way for
a good editing job. Emacs has a powerful PO mode for that, with access
to the source context, and including features for programmers (marking
the translatables strings).
Still it will be necessary to mark the strings in the Weblogger source files,
and a means for these strings to be recognized and proccesed in the user's
native language.
Gettext proposal is the mark 'gettext' as a standard and a alternative
abbreviation for Lisp code consisting of (_"string")
I'm a little surprised (now that I've looked) to discover that there is
no “Emacs-way” to handle i18n and l10n. Perhaps this is an opportunity
to make a significant contribution to Emacs.
The lack of i18n/l10n from Emacs is a _real_tragedy_ for the Software Libre
world and for the entire computer users community. As an example, we are
a very small Canary Islands based company. We all use GNU Emacs and
our customers from scholar/academic scene -that are good profesionals in
areas such as literature, historiography, psychology- are not technical users
and most of them do not speak English, but French (in case they really know
a second language). It is a deep misconception to think that Emacs is not
for this kind of people. With Emacs, we could solve a very large range of
their needs. (Emacs is also for _the secretaries_, Stallman said in 1981; this
is our starting point, but not only for English secretaries, I suppose.)
Patches welcome!
Mark.