[PD] What about multilingual Pd ?

[Marc Lavallée]

Le 12 Décembre 2005 13:53, derek holzer a écrit :
> Here you have the old chicken/egg syndrome. If the GUI says "Nachricht",
> but the docs say "Message", you have a big problem for a new user, and I
> would argue that is a bigger problem than if the GUI says "Message", the
> docs say "Message", but the user happens to be German.

Then it would help to have a menu to choose the language, instead of only 
use the language of the desktop environment.

> The danger I see is that non-English-speaking users will (of course) be
> attracted by reading that PD "supports" French, German, Portuguese,
> whatever. And the initial experience with the GUI will support that, but
> any further attempts to figure out what is really going on will only
> frustrate them because the help files and documentation are inconsistant
> with both the GUI and their expectations that their langauge is
> "supported".

The situation can be explained, and (smart) users can understand. There's 
tons on software being translated, and it takes time. Frustated users can 
always stick to English; anyway, the "frustrated" type often decide to live 
its entire computer life in English, no matter if resources all available 
in its own language. If we don't even try to offer multilingual support, 
because some people could possibly complain, then it will never happen.

> In practical terms, my suggestion would be to would leave localized GUI
> support in the dev catagory, and not mention it anyplace else until
> matching documentation is supported. While that doesn't affect Miller's
> releases at all, it does leave people like Hans-Christoph and other
> package-maintainers in a position where they must decide if GUI support
> without documentation to go with it is an appropriate inclusion.

Leaving the multilingual feature hidden until everything is perfect would 
kill the effort. Most computer users are able to work in a mixed language 
environment. There could be a fallback mechanism to display help in French, 
then English, then Esperanto (for example). If the localization process is 
made easy, collaborative and incremental, then usually software and 
documentation gets translated fast enough. Good examples includes popular 
desktop environments for Gnu based operating systems, and web CMS like 
Plone.

I know, I know, life would be much easier with one OS, one type of computer, 
one language, one country, one political system, and the rest, all matching 
our own personal preferences... but it appears that diversity and tolerance 
are good and must be encouraged, even by new media artists.

Mathieu wrote:
> If Pd is multilingual (and generally customisable) then it will feel more 
> like home. People care more  about things that feel like home 
> -- even software. 

Even software!
--
Marc