[sword-devel] Localised language names for third party modules?

[DM Smith]

Just my opinion:
a) It is a best practice to use the 2 letter code if it is available. 
Not a requirement. In the wiki, 
http://crosswire.org/wiki/DevTools:confFiles, it says: "ISO 639-1 codes 
are the preferred code..."

b) A front-end should handle aliases for the same language.

A front-end can accomplish this by several means:
i) Localize both 2 and 3 letter codes.
ii) Create a map of 2 letter codes to their 3 letter counterparts. (I 
think this is the better solution.)

Related, the wiki entry gives that we might see something like
zh-Hant or zh-Hans for traditional or simplified Chinese, respectively.
or
en-GB or en for British English vs American English (Note: SWORD already 
uses en for American English.)
Both script and country can be specified, but I can't think of any real 
examples where we might see this.

In all cases, the language is first.

I've got some work in JSword to support these observations.

-- DM


On 12/22/2009 08:09 AM, David Haslam wrote:
> Front-end applications such as Xiphos display localized language names as
> branches in the module manager.
>
> However, not all third party created modules stick to the CrossWire
> developers' guideline to use the two letter language code, when both two
> letter and three letter codes are defined in ISO-639.
>
> Example:
>
> One of the modules from the  http://www.wordofgod.in/ Word of God  team in
> India is the Tamil Bible.
>
> ISO-639-1 code for Tamil is "ta"
> ISO-639-2 code for Tamil is "tam"
> ISO-639-3 code for Tamil is "tam"
>
> The language code in tamil.conf is "tam".
>
> This causes Xiphos to display it as an English language name "Tamil" rather
> than a localized one, "தமிழ்".
>
> Should Xiphos be made sufficiently versatile to cope with such third party
> deviations from our guidelines?
>
> Or should we suggest to brother Yesudas Solomon to change the conf file to
> use the two letter code?
>
> A similar situation appertains for the Hindi, Telugu and Kannada Bible
> modules available from the same website.
>
> David H.
>
>
>
>
>