Re: [Texmacs-dev] Translations

[David Allouche]

On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 11:36:46PM +0100, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> 
> > And, yes, the Andrey's tool is probably very helpful for Russian, but
> > it is no match to KBabel (which I have seen at work). The GNOME
> > praject also certainly have a similar tool...
> 
> Well, I think that Andrey had a lot of fun developing his tool and
> that his tool has proved to be valuable for many people,
> and not only for Russian users. In any case we needed a tool
> like this in order to reuse older dictionaries.
> So you may be a bit more respectful for one of our main developers.

Andrey has all my respect, and you have it too. I just regret I do not
hear more about the work he is doing.

About dictool, I have tried it a bit, and I noticed that it requires a
lot of user interaction with the mouse. To translate one term, one
have to click on the list, select edit on the menu, click on the edit
field, type the translation, select ok from the menu. Some of it can
probably be done by keyboard shortcuts, but it is not going to be good
for the carpal tunnel.

Of course, that can be fixed, that tool can be improved, but why
bother, since they are existing very efficient tools to do the work?

I understand the file format and encoding conversion and dictionnary
arithmetic are useful, but they can be done as well by command line
tools.

The next logical steps for me would be to implement what I suggest,
but I am already very busy. And you have asked me for several things I
would like to do on time.

> I must say that you make me quite tired: you first ask me for explanations.
> You then tell me to be frustrated if I do not immediately give them,
> although I am clearly entitled not to have time to explain you everything
> I say or claim. In fact, at the moment that you say this, there actually
> have been explanations.

I said it was frustrating because "that is more complicated than that"
and "I'll do something great, juste wait" are anwers I already seen
you give without further explanation. And I cannot read my mail while
I am answering it, so sorry if my first answer went after you finally
gave explanations. Which I appreciate.

> Then you put all your energy in explaining that what I want is
> wrong, even though it is clearly a nicer solution from a technical
> point of view. All this, while you admit that you are not a
> translator yourself, and probably not a specialist on the subject.

Sure, your solution is nicer from a technical point of view. I totally
agree with you. I am just no sure it is the better thing to do.

About translation competence, I will not argue.

> I conclude that I am loosing my time with explanations for your
> mere curiousity and that I get only negative comments in return.

I believe I do all I can to give construtive arguments to back my
comments, especially negative ones. Discussion DO include negative
comments. If you do not want to discuss design choices with your
developpers, that is your choice.

> I recall you that I develop free software for my pleasure and that I
> like to innovate whereever possible. Maybe I often reinvent the
> wheel, but I am willing to take this risk. Sometimes I loose some
> time, but other times I win some. If people are not willing to make
> positive and interesting comments, then I prefer not to waste my
> time with discussions. In the case of translations, I could have
> written 10% of the desired program instead of writing down all these
> explanations.

I never really though I would talk you out of this. I just wanted to
state clearly that I did not see the need for that and that I did not
think adding complexity was a good idea.

I just notice that your statement "I develop free software for my
pleasure" seems hardly compatible with another statement you made some
time ago: (caveats, inexact citation) "I want to replace LaTeX
worldwide". I agree fun is most important in free software, but that
is not the only thing to take into account to achieve "world
domination".

> We are even compatibile with .po files, so why rant?

I was not ranting, I was trying to talk you out of introducing what
looks like one more "not invented here" feature whose interest I could
not clearly see.

One of my goals on the longer term (and Steph's as well) is to remove
all the reinvented wheels from TeXmacs to keep just what makes TeXmacs
unique: the interactive typesetter. The first step toward that goal is
trying to prevent the introduction of new features which are not part
of that core and whose need is not apparent.

But since tree-based translations seem a requirement to your
wellbeing, just go on.

-- 
David Allouche         | GNU TeXmacs -- Writing is a pleasure
Free software engineer |    http://www.texmacs.org
   http://ddaa.net     |    http://alqua.com/tmresources
   address@hidden  |    address@hidden
TeXmacs is NOT a LaTeX front-end and is unrelated to emacs.