Hi, > it quite rigidly describes gender roles for translators and programmers... > it's easy to see this as confirmation that coders should be men.
The introduction [1] explains that this is just a convention. The more general concept in the area of software design is the "persona" [2][3]. It is useful because software can have more than 2 types of users (= personas). In fact, gettext already has 3 types of users: - The end-user who wants internationalized messages. - The programmer. - The translator. The common practice is to attach some first names. For example, in the GNU gettext manual, we might use: - Andrea, the end-user. - Kevin, the programmer. - Charlotte, the translator. I wouldn't mind if the GNU gettext manual was changed to use first names instead of "he" and "she", but *please* choose better first names!!! First names to avoid are those for which neither "he" nor "she" can universally be used because they apply to both boys and girls: - Andrea (male in Italy, female in Germany), - Eike, Kim, Alex (male or female in Germany), - Camille, Claude, Dominique, Stéphane, Maxime (male or female in France), - and so on. Bruno [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Introduction.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design#Analysis_tools
