No, I speak English :P [Re: A chance to help]

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

Programming in American, even if the Gnu standard mandates it is simply a
bad idea.

The standard for English is en-GB, british English.
>From a programming and translation point of view it is easiest for the C
locale to be en == en-GB and change to American English for the few
exceptional cases.

American English is spoken by North Americans and one or two east Asian
countries (Japan I think).  Standard English is spoken by the majority of
the English speaking world, thanks India ;)

There was a recent article on Americanisms on Slashdot (lots of very
interesting comments) in which it was pointed out that in many cases both
spellings are acceptable in American English although the Standard English
spelling would usually not be the common usage spelling, the Websters
Dictionary considers it correct.

Although I accpet many Americanisms such as center, dialog, program,
anolog, and so on, I often consider them to be exceptoinal and disctinct
because they are very specifically computer science terminalogy, such as a
computer program, rather than a television programme. And my spelling is
shot to hell, from watching too much tv anyway.

More to the point, the bug report mentioned on cites Colour Versus Color,
which I can agree is annoying and the necessary changes are totally
reasonable, as I have to put up with the reverse in so much software.
However for other terminology it is often better to choose neutral words,
rather than pulling a Microsoft and hardcoding inappropriate
Americanisation like "Favorites" that you cannot get rid of, particularly
when better terminology is available (links, or shortcuts for example, I
may have a link to Microsoft.com but it sure as hell is not my favourite).

In summation, please dont change the default, create an en_US locale,
and for any changes other than Colour to Color, please consider taking the
time to come up with a better more neutral term.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

PS I'll probably copy this to the bug report later...


On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Lars Clausen wrote:

> Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:43:45 -0500
> From: Lars Clausen <lrclause@cs.uiuc.edu>
> Reply-To: dia-list@gnome.org
> To: dia-list@gnome.org
> Subject: A chance to help
>
>
> For those of you who have little or no programming skill (or C knowledge),
> but want to help improve Dia, look at the bug report
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=120466.  As stated, it'd be great
> to get standardized on American spelling for the benefit of the
> translators, and there are several other things in the l10n guidelines
> (linked to from the bug report) that I'm sure we're not following.  Time to
> wield your +2 Grep of Finding!  Coordinate your attack on the list, or risk
> duplicate work.
>
> -Lars