Re: pango and xplanet

[Tomohiro KUBOTA <debian at tmail dot plala dot or dot jp>]

Hello,

From: Hari Nair <hari at alumni dot caltech dot edu>
Subject: Re: pango and xplanet
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 23:52:11 -0800

> After some thought, I think using gettext is not very useful for
> xplanet.  We can have customized marker files in UTF8 for each locale,
> and the user can simply specify which one(s) he/she wants to use in the
> configuration file.  I will be happy to distribute localized marker
> files with xplanet, including a "pango" one with each city name in its
> local format (e.g. earth.ja_JP, earth.ru_RU, etc).

Ok, I will supply "earth.ja" file, after you will update the original
marker file.  When a user ordered to use "earth" marker file, it would
be nice if xplanet will automatically search "earth.ja_JP" and then
"earth.ja" in LANG=ja_JP.eucJP locale (for example).

I imagine Arab people want to supply "earth.ar" file rather than
"earth.ar_??" file, because Arab language is shared by many countries.
(Am I right?)
On the other hand, "earth.zh_TW" and "earth.zh_CN" would be completely
different.

For Japanese, "ja" and "ja_JP" doesn't have practical difference
because Japanese language is spoken only in Japan.


However, please note that one of gettext's merits is that obsolete
translation and new items to be translated can be easily detected.


From: Arafat Medini <lumina at silverpen dot de>
Subject: Re: pango and xplanet
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 10:13:54 +0100

> Second, I think about it being a gimmick or not comes to it's adoption
> by the user, if "many" Arabic users (for eg.) will use xplanet then it
> would be nice to even have locales like Osaka in Arabic ;)
> Else this is not really useful if only hackers and ppl of the western
> hemisphere will use the file.

This will be achieved by "localized marker files ... e.g. earth.ja_JP,
earth.ru_RU, etc" (citation from Hari's mail above).  Then xplanet will
have (for example) Baghdad in Japanese.


> Third, the map is a little bit overcrowded, maybe you can use some
> option to make the user display what he wants. cz I am seeing China and
> Japan very full of city names but india without any city name ;) Well in
> Japan I only see osaka, tokyo, nagoya and kamaukara (I suppose) but
> corea is lost btw the kanjis...
> So it would be better to have some representative cities instead of many
> cities OR include all the cities (or the majority of them) with making
> the ppl choose with a dialog for eg...

I imagine you are saying about the "pango" sample image by Hari.  It
is just an example and many of them are commented-out in the standard
marker file.  Please consult the file.  (Hari's previous mail yesterday
or download xplanet 1.0.1 from http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/ .)

Anyway, I felt that the file contains too many Chinese and Indian cities.
I think that these two countries have many populous cities.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota at debian dot org>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/