bug#55250: [PATCH] Add Ukrainian tutorial

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Denys Nykula <vegan@libre.net.ua>
> Date: Tue, 03 May 2022 22:34:09 +0300
> 
> Hello.  I translated the Emacs tutorial to Ukrainian.

Thank you very much for this contribution, and for your interest in
Emacs.

> My translation has an additional section about installing and enabling
> a known good version of reverse-im from MELPA using eww and shell-
> command.  That package makes all the default English bindings available
> when writing long Cyrillic texts, such as this translation.

This should not be in a tutorial.  The translations of the tutorial
should be strictly translations, with no additional material specific
to the target language.  And AFAUI from your short description, the
reverse-im package is useful in very specific jobs, not in general for
using Emacs in the Ukrainian language environment, so it is not
appropriate for the tutorial in any case.

Moreover, we generally refrain from advertising MELPA regardless,
because that collection doesn't distinguish between Free and non-Free
software packages it hosts.  So for us to advertise that package,
someone should submit it to either GNU ELPA or non-GNU ELPA; then we
can think where in the Emacs documentation to mention it.

So please remove that addition from the tutorial translation.

> In lisp/language/cyrillic.el, using which I added the translation to
> the menu, I see two sections about Ukrainian, both mentioning the koi8-
> u layout.  I have not seen anyone using that layout directly for over a
> decade, as all new text here is UTF-8.  But I am not familiar with the
> codebase so I did not touch anything besides linking the tutorial.

Thanks.  KOI8-U is mentioned there as the preferred encoding.  I
understand you are saying this is obsolete, and Ukrainian users
nowadays mostly use UTF-8 instead?  Does it mean most Ukrainian Emacs
users are forced to customize their Emacs to prefer UTF-8?  Would it
be possible for you to ask on some relevant forum whether indeed this
is the case, so we have some more substantial basis for the decision
to switch our defaults?

What about input methods? do you have any information regarding modern
input methods used for Ukrainian when the keyboard doesn't support the
Ukrainian characters directly?  Is the input method we set up by
default in the Ukrainian language environment appropriate?

> * etc/tutorials/TUTORIAL.uk: Create the translation.
> * lisp/language/cyrillic.el: Link "Emacs Tutorial"
> to the translation if the system is Ukrainian.
> * etc/tutorials/TUTORIAL.translators: Attribute my work.

Thanks.  This addition of a new translation should be called out in
etc/NEWS, as we have done for other added translations.

> diff --git a/lisp/language/cyrillic.el b/lisp/language/cyrillic.el
> index 4576373..9eaf00a 100644
> --- a/lisp/language/cyrillic.el
> +++ b/lisp/language/cyrillic.el
> @@ -131,7 +131,8 @@ 'koi8-u
>    :mime-charset 'koi8-u)
>  
>  (set-language-info-alist
> - "Ukrainian" '((charset koi8-u)
> + "Ukrainian" '((tutorial . "TUTORIAL.uk")
> +            (charset koi8-u)
>              (coding-system koi8-u)
>              (coding-priority koi8-u)
>              (nonascii-translation . koi8-u)

As you see in other language-related settings, language-info-alist can
include what we call "sample text", which is actually the greeting in
the language from the etc/HELLO file.  Would you like to add a
Ukrainian greeting, both to the above setting of language-info-alist
and to etc/HELLO?

Finally, to be able to accept your contribution of this size, we'll
need you to assign the copyright for your work to the FSF.  If you are
willing to do that, I will send you the form to fill and the
instructions to go with it, to start your legal paperwork rolling.

Thanks again for working on this.