Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!spdcc!tauxersvilli!alphalpha!nazgul
From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Language dependent application defaults
Keywords: Nationalization, Application Defaults
Message-ID: <1990Feb16.160754.3212@alphalpha.com>
Date: 16 Feb 90 16:07:54 GMT
References: <898@ztivax.UUCP>
Organization: Alphalpha Software, Inc.
Lines: 44

In article <898@ztivax.UUCP> kap121@ztivax.UUCP (Thomas Oeser) writes:
>looking at the documentation of X11R4 I found some surprising lines talking
>about application defaults depending on the current setting of $LANG.
...
>	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;
How do you deal with size changes if you are trying to make the interface
esthetically pleasing (sure, I could just let things resize automatically,
but English->German is a pretty big growth).  Also, I need to be able to
support multiple languages simultaneously.  I can do this using compound
strings, but I don't believe that the catgets functionality will give me
what I want.  (BTW.  Is there a PD implementation somewhere?  A number of
the machines I'm porting to don't support it.)

>	2) Other language dependent stuff (e.g., number of entries, other
>	   values, etc.) can also be set in message files using catgets() and
>	   e.g. sscanf();
What about symbols and icons?  What about reversing my interface when the language
goes right to left?  How do I use catgets() if I'm using a user interface language
like Motif's UIL?

I kind of feel that the catalog stuff came along and solved the text problem just
about the time that simple text was no longer the only problem.

>The general issue should be to minimze the number of (language dependent) files
>that are necessary to run an application (simplifies maintenance of resulting
>products!).
Absolutely, but that requires a solution that provides all of the necessary
functionality.  I don't currently see that.

>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.
Definitely.

								-kee
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