[sword-devel] Adding abbreviated names to the module conf file (was Re: isalnum(3) for i18n)

[Chris Little]

Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> Chris Little wrote:
> 
>> Could you describe how you think all of these values would be used
>> practically?
> 
> You would basically access them via the set locale.
> 
> The preference would be to get a locale appropriate name and if not the
> fall back solution which would be English. This is how Gnome does the
> menus and it works well.

I think neither of these would be the preferred display name. Rather, in 
the majority of cases, I think the name in the module's locale (as 
opposed to the system/user locale) would be the top choice.

Since new module .confs would have module name information in the 
module's own locale (provided it is available), I don't believe there's 
really a case where the system/user locale would ever be used.

Take, as a random example, the Western Highland Chatino NT we have. It's 
title is "Cha' Su'we Nu Nchkwi' Cha' 'In Jesucristo Nu Nka X'naan". That 
would go in Description. We would put something like "Western Highland 
Chatino NT" in the enDescription field, basically as a convenience to 
ourselves. I can't forsee a circumstance where the German, French, or 
Russian translations of "Western Highland Chatino NT" are useful. If you 
can only read English, German, French or Russian, then the text isn't 
going to be very useful to you.

I don't see the utility in other cases either....

> So if my locale is set to German in GS I want the Vulgate appearing as
> Vulgata, while whatever name a Russian would give the Vulgate would
> appear for him.

The proper titles of most original language texts are in Latin. We have 
a couple "Vulgate" modules, but those are historical artifacts. More 
recent work calls this Vulgate (cf. Vulgata Clementina). See also, 
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Textus Receptus, Septuaginta, Aleppo 
Codex, Westminster Leningrad Codex. Regardless of what we may have (or 
have had), almost all of these should properly be in Latin or be 
relatively language-neutral.

So in general, in the "Description" field we want the REAL title of the 
text--what you would expect to find on the title page of the printed 
edition.  "enDescription" would have an English translation of the 
title, an English description, or (with the Japanese Bibles, for 
example) a Latin-script transliteration. The "enDescription" would also 
continue to contain the English-language name of the language of the 
module. So, taking the 1912 Luther Bible as an example, we might have:

Description=Lutherbibel (1912)
enDescription=German Luther Bible (1912)
Abbr=Luther 1912

--Chris