German translation interferes with record extension

Wagner Bruna wagner.bruna+mercurial at gmail.com
Fri Sep 30 19:06:29 CDT 2011


On 09/28/2011 04:57 PM, Matt Mackall wrote:
> [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:

[translating prompt keys]

>> 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

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.

(I may be able to contribute some code for that, but ironically the increasing
Mercurial adoption here at work has been reducing my spare time :) )

Regards,
Wagner


More information about the Mercurial-devel mailing list