[sword-devel] isalnum(3) for i18n

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 2:48 AM, Eeli Kaikkonen
<eekaikko at mail.student.oulu.fi> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2008, Chris Little wrote:
>> 2) The module name is intended for use by developers, not necessarily
>> for display to users. That's why the constraint is iscsym--to
>> facilitate use within code. If you want to suggest the addition of a
>> short abbreviation .conf tag, that's a different matter.
>
> People seem to get used to those short abbreviations but still they are
> not very user friendly. Actually I would like to have two extra tags: a
> short abbreviation in the language of the module and a description in
> the language of the module. In internationalized and localized
> environments it's important to have both English and native language
> information available. As a user and as a developer I want to see
> information which I can understand even if I can't read the module.
> Therefore English short description is important. But I would like to
> have also a short Finnish abbreviation in Finnish modules. It's quite
> stupid to for example copy a quote which have "FinPR" attached while
> no-one uses that in Finnish - it's usually "KR 38" or something like
> that.

A lot of what we do happens for the convenience of developers rather
than users.  This should probably change, but it's not an easy thing
to change.  I think you are right that localised book names and
abbreviations are appropriate.

> It has occurred to my mind that a frontend could offer a UI for giving
> the abbreviation. User could give whatever string he wanted and it could
> be used in module lists and in other places. It would of course be
> stored separately, not in the module conf.

I don't necessarily mind that as an extra, but the problems with it are:
1. Most users won't want to do it.  As much as possible it should be a
thing that just works, which means a good, localised name and
abbreviation should come with the module.
2. It is unlikely to be supported by other applications, meaning you
have to do it on a per application basis or not bother.

Jon