Re: [Monotone-devel] resend : i18n

[Ethan Blanton]

Nathaniel Smith spake unto us the following wisdom:
> Another question is what to do with log messages, the L() macro.  Logs
> are only displayed when run with --debug or after a crash; they are
> more intended for developers than for users, so this might argue for
> leaving them in English (since that's the language of development), so
> crash reports are always intelligible.  OTOH, --debug can be quite
> handy to users to figure out what's going on at times...

We  have  discussed  this  in  the  Gaim  project,  and I will share our
thoughts (which I believe have already occurred to you).

We decided to leave debug log messages untranslated.  The final decision
was that the debug messages are really targeted at us and  not  the  end
user; the end user may find them useful, but someone without some knowl-
edge of the code base and willingness to poke isn't going to  find  them
particularly  valuable.  Likewise, the comments and documentation of the
codebase are in English, so the debug  messages  are  most  valuable  to
someone  who  can  read  the code documentation & comments and jive them
with the debug messages.  (Of course, the code is *supposed* to be clean
enough to be understood regardless, but particularly in the case of com-
mercial IM service protocols it may be quite  obtuse  and  difficult  to
understand without the documentation.)

So  ...  the person who loses out most to untranslated debug messages is
an end user who does not speak English but  is  a  competent  programmer
willing  to dig through the code and try to diagnose problems regardless
of lack of documentation, etc.  For one, this person sounds intrepid and
resourceful  and  might figure out how to work with our poor monolingual
debug message.  ;-)  The bottom line, though, is that for  *our*  (Gaim)
situation,  we don't see this as a common case, and we decided not to do
any translation.

In the monotone case, I suspect you're looking at an average user who is
more likely to be inclined to dive in to fix problems, so  your  mileage
may vary.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
                -- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764

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