lynx-dev Non-English input prompts

[Webmaster Jim]

I've been hacking on adding more flexible non-English message displays
than the include scheme used now in Lynx, specifically using GNU gettext
and message catalogs. I recently posted a first stab and received
a little feedback. I need to make some design decisions about code
revisions necessary to make Lynx more language adaptable.

1) Simple questions like "Leave Lynx (Y/N)?" could be recoded to accept
1=Yes/True, 0=No/False. With the gettext() methods the display would be
adapted to the current language, but not the input characters. We'd have
"Leave Lynx (1=S/0=N)" for Italian.

2) The keystroke mnemonic and option screens get pretty ugly in this
context, not to mention command-line parameters. The French translation
files from Chebucto I've looked at identify areas to be addressed.

3) The recent discussions about version-specific help screens are also
relevant to language-specific help screens. Should we have MxN help
directories?

4) There are also concerns about distributing a dozen message catalogs
for Lynx with the source code. I am looking at ways of building tar
files with just one language, or all languages, or simplay all message
catalogs.

As stated before, I intend to submit these changes for the next version
of Lynx (2-8-2?), so the release of 2-8-1 will not include any of this.