On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Oren Held wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I thoght about it for a while: In lots of new un*x softwares there's
> support for 'gettext' (it allows the user to have an interface for the
> program in HIS language, or more correct: in his $LANGUAGE variable).
or LANG, or LC_MESSAGES, or LC_ALL . see locale (7) .
>
> I translated downloader for X to hebrew, you can see this in the latest
> version, but then I thought- is it worthy at all ?
> 1. It requires the user to choose a hebrew font, in some programs (like
> this downloader) there's no such an option, so he should change it in his
> gtk config (~/.gtkrc). Now, I think that most of the Israeli users get
> these programs from .rpm files that came with the distro. They'll probably
> see jibrish, and stop using this program, or in the good case, they'll ask
> for help how to change it to english (remove $LANGUAGE from the
> env. vars), or in the best case- check out how to change to hebrew
> fonts. anyway- that can sometimes just make a headache to the user, which
> wasn't my main objective :)
In the case of gtk, there is a patch (which is aplied in Mandrake since at
least 7.0 . I think it was also accepted into the main gnome distro) to
have language-spesific config files: /etc/gtk/gtkrc.$LANG
This file could be used to set the default font as a hebrew one. The only
problem is that there is no standard name for a hebrew font.
Such solutions exist for other packages as well (for instance: every X app
can read a locale-spesific resources file)
>
> 2. Heberw interface - is it needed at all ? I heard of some people which
> dislikes the hebrew kde interface, or like other people (i.e- me), that
> install only windoze enabled and not the hebrew windoze. Maybe it's a
> waste of time to translate these, although I see in lots of programs
> support for other languages like japanese, dutch, desutsch, italian,
> etc. Maybe people here are not that patriots, and like english
> more than
> hebrew.
if you don't want the hebrew user interface: set LC_MESSAGES to "C" (and
make sure you don't have LC_ALL set to "he"). No need for a special
"hebrew" build.
Many people find a hebrew user interface more "friendly" and "familiar".
>
> 3. Logical: Is it worthy to translate all this, while in the next
> year(s) (I really hope so) gtk will include pango and will support logical
> hebrew, so all this translation will be lost ?
Not only that, but there is some damage in the fact that this translation
will be "unredable" (reversed) then.
But I figure a script will be able to do at least most of the conversion.
However, I feel that the majority of the work is about the translation of
the terminology.
See http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/HebLocale/
>
> -----
> If you believe it's still worthy, I have no problem to translate some
> programs to hebrew from time to time. but i'm not too sure about it.
Don't forget that as a translator you are also expected to maintain your
translation, as the user interface strings change.
> In my opinion - it looks great - check out
> http://www.deot.net/dl-hebrew.png
There are better fonts than "fixed"...
BTW: why did you underline Shin in "Shmor Reshima"?
Have you changed the keyboard accelerator for this menu item?
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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