German translation interferes with record extension

[Matt Mackall]

[adding some of the German translators in case they're not on the list]

On Wed, 2011-09-28 at 20:41 +0200, Meikel Brandmeyer wrote:
> Dear Mercurial devs,
> 
> I encountered an issue with record in 1.9.2.
> 
> What I did:
> 
> I started a record session, added some hunks and pushed "d" to skip over the remaining changes and files.
> 
> What I expected:
> 
> That exactly that happens and the commit message editor pops up.
> 
> What happened:
> 
> The next file got added to the changes to be committed. 
> 
> Thanks to Matt Mackall on #mercurial I found the culprit in the german locale settings.
> 
> The command keys are also translated. However this is  neither shown
> by the prompt of record nor by the help message which is accessible
> via ?. To add to the confusion the keys are also translated
> inconsistently. d and f basically flip their meaning, but y and n are
> *not* translated! So with y working as usual and the wrong prompt menu
> one has no indication whatsoever that the keys might be translated.
> 
> So there are two issues here: the keys are not translated consistently
> and record doesn't  give a hint (neither in the prompt nor in the help
> message) that the keys actually are translated.
> 
> As a side note: Maybe translating the keys should be reconsidered. It
> is perfectly reasonable to have non-english locale setting but at same
> time have an american keyboard layout. By translating eg. &Skip to
> &Überspringen you basically disable skipping of changes because you
> can't type ü on an american keyboard.

As I see it there are 3 issues here:

a) Do we want to translate keys or not?
b) record's unique prompt mechanism is not well-suited to translation
c) translation unsurprisingly got screwed up

My initial reaction to (a) is no, for the following reasons:

a) it makes documentation hard to do/use
b) the keyboard issue timeless mentioned
c) incremental translation can pull the rug out from under existing
users like Meikel here

..but I'm willing to defer to people who actually use translations on
this.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.