Re: locale

[Mikhael G. <mi...@co...>]

On 16 Nov 2000 22:35:15 +0100, Olivier Chapuis wrote:
> 
> The format seems ok for me. The problem is how the Script will read
> the data. At the present time the Script make its internationalization
> at startup (Themes Center set somethings like 37 variables and changes 
> 30 Titles). I do not know exactly how to implement the communication
> (Script is not very good for "reading" multiline via com or cat). 

It would be fine if FvwmScript supported hashs (but I think only perl
handles such nice data type). At least FvwmScript supports array, right?
You can transfer an entire array of messages into array variable.

So, you can try to solve an indexing problem, i.e. how to convert from
symbolic hash ids to actual array indexes.

> Also Script name its widgets by number (boring!). All this imply
> a rigid strategy for reading the data. For avoiding confusion (widget
> Id, position in array and msg id) it is may be preferable to replace
> the id number N by an english string?

id may be anything, which helps to FvwmScript or to an other i18n client.
But I am against id to be english message. We are not english speakers,
so we will change English text sometimes, we don't really need to
change all LANG files in this case, just one file.

Also English has simplistic syntax. If we have English as id, our
translations may be poor; using something not bound to English solves
this. In a good data base, unique ids should have no meaning if possible.

What about using FvwmScript widget numbers as part of id? :)
Say all global messages start with '-', all messages belonging to widget 1
start with '1-' and so on. Anything else as a separator is good too.

So, the problem is to translate from 12-3 to its place in the array.
Or maybe any script sample just will have an exec-function, which gets id
12-3 (third message for 12-th widget) and returns the translated string
via com (the LANG and domain are passed at the very beginning).

Of course, I may be wrong. You choose.

> You mean:
> 
> id[TAB]begin of a sentence %s end of the sentence
> 
> where %s have to be replaced by somethings? 

Only if this helps.

Regards,
Mikhael.