Re: localization of Grub

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Robert Millan wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:49:54PM +0200, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
>>>   - gettextise the util tools, so they can be translated as normal
>>>   programs.
>> ok! (I guess/hope that will be more "burocratic" work than new work)
> 
> It _is_ technical work I think, but less fun than the other part :-/
> 
>> I don't expect to have time until 22th October (aprox.). I have more
>> interest in the second part (it's "newer") than first part, but first
>> part has a practical and fast effects with (I think) less investment.
> 
> The second part also builds on the first, to some extent.  I.e. if you want
> to test gettext support in GRUB itself, you need some strings to translate,
> and these are provided by the .mo files which are only built if the build
> system supports that, etc.

Before you guy's go too deep in detail I would like to remind special
requirements for graphical user interface related to localization.

You can't just printf stuff to screen in there. There has to be some
changes in logic how information is presented to user. Currently there
is lot of printf's in the code to display information and that is not
going to be too pretty for graphical menu as we need to display some
kind of console on event when there is something to be displayed.

Also try to think how different languages differentiate for displaying
certain types of information. Here is some simple example. (Bear in mind
if there are grammatical errors or typos or so :))

(eng) "See Figure 2 in page 14 for more details.' -> (fin) "Sivulla 14
olevassa kuvassa 2 on enemmän tietoa asiasta.'

Please notice difference in order of arguments in the languages.

Also there are some weird scripts that change order of characters. In
example for some right-to-left scripts seem to have this feature. On
example that I think belongs to this group is hebrew where they normally
write from right-to-left, but for English (or foreign) texts are still
visually correct.

In example:
"<native>This is native 1</native><english>2and this is
English3</english><native>4, so weird.</native>"

Would be something like:
".rdiew os ,42and this is English31 evitan si sihT"

So this subject really has more details than meets the eye in first sight :)