RE: Re: Is there any desire to support languages other than English in zsh?

[zeurkous@blaatscaahp.org]

Haai,

Me thinks it's about time for me to speak up.

On Wed, 7 Jun 2023 23:52:59 -0400, Agron Selimaj <as9902613@gmail.com> wrote:
> What if we take the long path by starting small?
>
> Let me add gettext support, and we don't have to use it everywhere from day
> one.

An incomplete, underdesigned "feature" upsets people more than a lack of
such, IME. Besides, sprinkling gettext calls around just leads to more
bloat, and more importantly, is inconsistent with the existing design
of zsh.

But me has deeper objections to this whole idea.

Whether we like it or not... the main language of computing as we know
it, is English. Me's not a fan of hiding that fact. zsh is aimed at a
moderately technical audience. It's not unreasonable to expect zsh users
to learn English (either up front, as many do in school; or for the rest
of us, as we go). 

The real issue is to process text correctly, no matter what natlang
it's written in. As long as we're dandy there, me doesn't see the need
for all this messing about translating shell messages.

Indeed, it's actively harmful: while it's somewhat rare, shell messages
are occasionally parsed by invoking programs (such as test scripts), and
those programs would have to be updated to deal with localized versions
of them as well.

Besides, in the specific case of the shell language: the names of many
commands and concepts like "if", "exec", etc. will remain untranslated
by necessity. This will create a jarring discontinuity that people may
trip over (and IIRC there have been environments where the next step
was to localize the names, making code incompatible between natlangs...
ugh.).

To summarize: the posts use French; me's been informed that for world
trade, the most prominent language is Spanish; and in computing, we have
English as our primary language. 

Is that really a bug? Or just a fact of life? Or perhaps even an asset,
as many globalists would argue?

Either way, steps towards splitting the shell along natlang lines
should not be taken lightly.

Hope this gives some insight,

        --zeurkous.

-- 
Friggin' Machines!