[sword-devel] language/locale codes

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Thu, 12 Nov 2009, Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> > 2) Should ancient, historic, & extinct languages ever be listed in their
> > own language?
>
> I think your argument (deleted in my response) is correct, only the
> alternative is not inspiring either - to have a language name present in
> English.
>
> Maybe this is fine for really odd languages where essentially only
> scientists have an idea (I never heard of some of the languages you
> mentioned), but there is the not small collection of ancient and extinct
> languages which are widely understood by people from a variety of
> backgrounds:
>
> Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, Sanskrit, Geez and probably more.
>
> These languages all share that they still have liturgical or other daily
> use for some people and should therefore either be available under their
> own name or under a localised name. Which adds probably enormous complexity.

I'm not sure what we are talking about. Peter makes it sound like that
the "canonical" name for each language, i.e. the list in unlocalized
form, is native name in its own language. Xiphos shows "Hebrew" in
hebrew alphabets etc. My opinion is very strong here: it's wrong. All
names should be in English for English speakers, in French for French
speakers etc. The above mentioned examples should of course be in the
same language the user understands. It should be possible to add another
field to the canonical list in the native language so that any frontend
could show the native language name in parenthesis or in a tooltip or
whatever. The canonical list should be in English anyways because
English is the default language for any i18n'ed computer application.

  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)