Re: [bug-gettext] ISO-8859-8 and bidi (was Re: [Translation-i18n] gnulib, bison-runtime and texinfo charset)

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

[short summary for bug-gettext]
Due to limitations of terminals on many systems Hebrew translators often
have to distribute translations "backwards" (in visual order) which
affects long-term storage and may make the files non-reusable for other
purposes as well as violationg various standards.
Moreover in current state there is no long-term migration path to
anything even halfway sane.
Same problem exists for other RTL languages but currently no console
program is translated on TP to any other RTL language.
[/short summary for bug-gettext]
>>> The existing .po files are in visual order because they are for
>>> console programs, and because the vast majority of consoles don't
>>> provide bidi reordering.
>> That's very unfortunate situation of intentional bug in order to a
>> compensate for another bug, especially given that all involved software
>> is libre.
> First, not all the involved software is free, at least not if you
> think outside GNU/Linux.
texinfo running on Debian using gnome-terminal involves no proprietary
software.
>   And second, what can I say? the world is not
> a perfect place, and software engineering, as any other engineering,
> is a discipline of compromises between the desired and the possible.
> It is better to have an imperfect solution than none at all; if I'd
> written the translations in logical-order Hebrew, no one would be able
> to read them on many systems.
The biggest problems are the lack of sane migration path and that it
affects long-term storage. It's fine to output backwards on local
display in order to get it right. So what do you think about having bidi
in gettext which would kick-in when the output is on a crappy terminal?
It won't solve all the problems but should allow easier handling of .po
files and allow an easy migration from buggy to non-buggy terminals by
simply defining a variable in terminal (e.g. LC_TERMINAL_ORDER=logical).
I volunteer to write a patch in exchange of someone proofreading and
testing logical-order conversions and a hope of long-term migration to
sane UTF-8


-- 
Regards
Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko

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