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Re: Why emacs have not native language menu


From: Giorgos Keramidas
Subject: Re: Why emacs have not native language menu
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:56:14 +0300
User-agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1.50 (berkeley-unix)

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:19:14 +0200, Hadron <hadronquark@googlemail.com> wrote:
>Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
>>> No. That is NOT what emacs is. eLisp is the programming
>>> language. Emacs is an infrastructure which supports multiple
>>> applications programmed in elisp. They can be localised.
>>
>> Look, if you asked to localize microemacs or nano, I'd say, no
>> problem go ahead.  But emacs is lisp.
>
> We are talking the command names interfaces and help texts - not the
> function names. e.g you dont see "find-file-at-point" in the
> menu. No. You find "Open File" or similar.

But then you have to write the manual for this localized menu,
and all sorts of problems creep up.  For example it is _very_
easy to explain to an English-speaking person that `M-x find-file
RET path RET' is the same as `menu: File | Open ...', and the
English-speaking person will quickly get used to the term
`find-file'.  If you describe in an ISO 8859-7 Greek manual that
the following are equivalent:

    M-x find-file RET διαδρομή RET
    μενού: Αρχείο | Άνοιγμα ...

which are the localized versions, then it's not as easy to
remember that the `random' name `find-file' maps easily to the
Greek text for "Open..." :-(

While I agree that localization *is* useful, it's also my
understanding that it is not a particularly easy task, nor an
effort that can always create the same mental `mappings' between
menu entries, help text, tooltips, keyboard sequences, etc.



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