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Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 16:31:08 -0800
Message-Id: <199612070031.QAA05134@xemacs.eng.sun.com>
From: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>
To: mule@etl.go.jp
Cc: XEmacs Beta Test <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: mule API of Emacs and XEmacs (Re: caesar-region)
In-Reply-To: <199612061116.UAA12959@sparc18.personal-media.co.jp>
References: <199612060823.RAA06798@etlken.etl.go.jp>
	<199612061116.UAA12959@sparc18.personal-media.co.jp>
Reply-To: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>
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>>>>> "Chiaki" == Chiaki Ishikawa <ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp> writes:

Chiaki> There are two types of Japanese:

Chiaki> Type A are those who would want to see the output of date command in
Chiaki> Japanese.
Chiaki> 	1996 Nen (in Kanji) 11 gatsu(in kanji), etc..

Chiaki> Type B are those who thinks that output of date ought be alaways like

Chiaki> 	Fri Dec  6 20:08:16 JST 1996
	

Chiaki> so that their shell/awk scripts won't break.

Portable shell or awk (ugh - perl is better) scripts should use
LC_ALL=C date

That's not hard.  I run in a `ja' locale personally, and have had to
add LC_ALL=C to some of my scripts. It's one of my smallest, and
easiest-to-fix, portability problems.

Chiaki> I think Sun and other vendors have listened to type A people too much.

Chiaki> Seriously,  I agree with the following statement.

>> For a programmer, this English message is enough.

Chiaki> Blind translation of some messages can be problematic.

Chiaki> ON THE OTHER HAND(!), I have to train some clerical temps to use our
Chiaki> internal LAN and how many times I wished that certain messages show up
Chiaki> in a readable Japanese phrases. 

Chiaki> So there is no clear cut answer on the question of message
Chiaki> translation facility.

Chiaki> What I would like to see is have reasonablly good tanslation for all
Chiaki> the key messages, AND being able to shut down the translation (using
Chiaki> locale? maybe) for myself completely.

Chiaki> Yes, users want to have their cake and eat it too.
Chiaki> (and request second servings if you are not firm!)

Chiaki> I have joined GNU locale translation mailing list, but
Chiaki> have never been able to answer the above question of whether
Chiaki> message translation is really necessary at GNU tool level myself.

Chiaki> Just two my cents worth.

Chiaki> I hate to see talented people's time being wasted to solve answerless
Chiaki> questions...

Chiaki> -- 
Chiaki>      Ishikawa, Chiaki        	ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp             
Chiaki>  (family name, given name)
Chiaki>     Personal Media Corp.                  
Chiaki>   Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan 142

-- 
Martin Buchholz <mrb@eng.sun.com>
XEmacs Developer, Sun Microsystems Inc.

