German translation interferes with record extension

Greg Ward greg-hg at gerg.ca
Sun Oct 2 17:39:27 CDT 2011


On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Meikel Brandmeyer <mb at kotka.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am 01.10.2011 um 02:06 schrieb Wagner Bruna:
>
>> In my experience, applications that try to support both translated and
>> untranslated keys are easier to use. In Portuguese, for instance, some prompts
>> accept both 's' ("sim") and 'y' for "yes". I personally dislike key
>> translations (I think of those as one-letter commands, and translating
>> commands doesn't make any sense), but they *are* helpful for users that do not
>> understand English very well.
>>
>> So IMHO the code should always accept the original untranslated keys, and
>> additionally distinct keys suggested by the current translation. On the other
>> hand, the documentation should always mention the original keys, since we
>> never know if a particular prompt text translation will be available.
>
> How would that work? The german translation (in this specific case) basically swaps the meaning of f and d for the record commands. So it's either or in this case. Accepting both won't work. And in this case I would prefer non-translated keys. The help menu is right there in case of harder to memorize non-translated keys.

As a native English-speaker who only interacts with software in
English, I should just add that the one-key shortcuts for "hg record"
are just as arbitrary and unmemorable to me as if the software were
written entirely in German (which I don't know at all). I think that's
specific to "record", though, since there are so many possible choices
there.

In other words, switching "hg record" from the current letter codes to
(say) {1, 2, 3, ...} would probably just as user-friendly. And it
would be easy to translate.

Greg


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