On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 13:08 +0100, Bjørn Vermo wrote:
May I suggest a zero-lingual base version? The only way to make software
truly language independent is to avoid the concept of a "default language". If everybody has to get a language file, developers will be forced to
think about localization issues.
That's difficult. IIUC what you propose is a more 'catgets' style than a 'gettext' style of coding. E.g. where each human readable message in the source is given a number so that even English messages must be looked up in the catalog. The alternative is what Mailman currently uses -- the English message serves as the lookup key in the catalog.
Ages ago we experimented with both styles. I highly dislike message numbers and prefer gettext, although admittedly I'm probably biased by being a native English speaker.
As for Fil's opinion on splitting the distribution up by languages, I kind of agree. I think we should continue to produce fat distributions with all languages, possibly providing an English-only (i.e. no catalogs) distribution as a thin alternative. I'm still +1 though on Tokio's changes to allow the site admin to /install/ Mailman with fewer languages.
-Barry