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From: kit@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Chris D. Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Language dependent application defaults
Message-ID: <9002151430.AA11687@expo.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 15 Feb 90 14:30:19 GMT
References: <898@ztivax.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
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> I want to start (again ?) a discussion about Language dependent application
> defaults. Here some reasons, why I believe we should avoid (or event don't
> offer) this functionality:

>	1) For the case that only button labels or other text strings differ,
>	   this should be done within the program using catgets() and
>	   explicitely setting the appropriate resource of the corresponding
>	   widget;

Wouldn't this require recompilation to add a new language?  The app-defaults
solution has the advantage of allowing the appliction to be internationalized
w/o modifing the binary.  This separates the programmer from the language
specialist.  Give how complex this stuff is becoming any separation of tasks
such as this would seem to be well worth a bit of extra configuration headaches.
Spend the extra time working on an install script that does all the right things.

This is not to say that we have found the final answer, just that the current
app-defaults technique may not be as bad as you think.  Localization is a hard
problem.

You don't have to use the solutions proposed by the toolkit, but they are there
if you want them.  If you want to hard code everything into you application you
can certainly do so.  Of course, I would never buy your product if you did that,
but that's my choice :-)

> We should try to create X applications (using Athena, Motif or other widget
> sets) that are able to startup even when no application defaults are provided.

I disagree.  I see no need to have the application "work correctly" with no
application defaults.  I consider the app-defaults file just as much a part of
the application as the executable, the help file, or some other data file.

That is not to say that a well written application should fail silently when no
app-defaults file is present.  I think that the behavior of the R4 xman is
perfectly acceptable.  If no app-defaults file is found then it puts up a
message saying that it couldn't find the app-defaults, and asks the user if he
would like to quit.  Part of the application is missing.  Since the application
has notified the user of this it has fulfilled its responsibility.  I see no
reason to duplicate the entire app-defaults file in the text space of the
applications binary.

I should note that there are a certain set of applications that will need to run
in the absence of app-defaults.  These are things like a file system recovery
tool.  If the file system is corrupted you really can't count on finding that
app-defaults file :-)

						Chris D. Peterson     
						MIT X Consortium 

Net:	 kit@expo.lcs.mit.edu
Phone:   (617) 253 - 9608	
Address: MIT - Room NE43-213