Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sat, 18 Jan 1997 21:11:13 +0100 (MET) | From | Tomasz Motyleswki <> | Subject | Re: Jive -> Kernel (International Linux) |
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On Sat, 18 Jan 1997, David Woodhouse wrote:
> There are two options here - either allow for dynamic changing of > language, which presents a few problems, not of which are insurmountable, > or compile the new language directly into the kernel. Personally, I'd > prefer the latter option, as it will be simpler to implement and maintain.
Please, do not do it ! Whatever language we present messages to the "end user", there must be a possibility to see and save original, English messages.
In general, I am against programs which are not able to communicate with people and _other_programs_ in English. National language may be an additional feature, BUT NOT the only available feature. Having such a nationalized program or operating system is a real disaster (I am Polish, and I really understand better English versions of programs like MS Windows then their Polish translations).
Let us assume that someone writes a very clever script analysing /ver/log/syslog and undertaking varius actions. You change language - it will be broken. (Like Internet Assistant for Polish and most other versions of MS Word (even the macro language there is in Polish ;-) )
Developers: if you accept national language support in Linux kernel, be prepared for analysing debug logs in all supported languages. (Your answer would be probably: "Compile English version of your kernel, and reproduce the bug!")
Users: be prepered to translate manually all your kernel messages to English, in case something goes wrong and you want some help.
Therefore I would suggest creating an additional stream of kernel messages from klogd/syslogd and passing it through some filter (hash table based on translation file, as suggested before). That filter could send the messages in different languages to different consoles. But messages should be still saved on disk in English.
Please reply only directly to me. Save the bandwidth on linux-kernel for more relevant topics.
-- Tomasz Motylewski
P.S. Someone wrote "like it is done in Windows NT". Well, we are here not to emulate every broken feature of Windows NT.
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