locales in Linux(was..Re: REALLY *not* Tamil...)

From: Jungshik Shin (jshin@mailaps.org)
Date: Tue Jul 30 2002 - 02:13:53 EDT


On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Kenneth Whistler wrote:

> Keld wrote:
>
> > In Linux,
>
> *Which* Linux? :-) <.. a long list of Linux distro. snipped...>

 To quote Keld, 'all mainstream new Linux distributions' :-)

> > submit it to the glibc people, but then - in about 6 months or so,
> > it
> > would be available on all mainsteam new Linux distributions, off the
> > shelf.
>
> While most of the Linuxes do make use of GNU/C, they don't all do so
> at the same levels or with the same versions of glibc, and certainly
> not all at the same times.

  That's true. However, Keld didn't say that all of them come with the
same version of glibc at the same time, either. 6 months might not
be long enough, but almost certainly in a year so, one's submission
(if accepted) would make it in almost all major new Linux distros.

> > And all applicatuions would adhere to it, given Linux' advanced
> > i18n technology.
>
> I think this is talking through your hat at bit. Do you think that
> Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 PDF viewer on Linux-Mandrake is going to
> just automatically pick up an Ethiopic locale setting because I
> happened to submit a locale proposal to the glibc people 6 months
> earlier. I don't think so.

   This is a much more valid point than the above. Not all applications
are written 'compliant to'/with the C(/C++) locale model(but many of
them - esp. gtk/gnome and kde appls.- are). Some of them aren't because
it's decided that the model is not sufficient/suitable for them for one
reason or another (portability, need for more fine-grained control,
application-specific needs not covered by ISO/IEC TR 14652) while
others aren't simply because developers/vendors of those applications
don't realize the need for I18N.

   Jungshik



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 30 2002 - 00:24:27 EDT