Subject: Re: no locale fallbacks for dictionaries (was Re: Commit: fix that spelling + im
From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2001 - 04:31:49 CST
>Dom:
> You're quite wrong here, Tomas. Documents are intended for readers, not
> authors (they're what authors produce for their readers). You're correct for
> the specific case where author==reader. I couldn't care what locale someone
> wrote a doc in. All I care about is what locale I'm reading it in.
That's nonsense. Documents represent the authors and it is their
and only their choice how they compose them. You can turn
Pygmalion into My Fair Lady, but when you do, it ceases to be a
play by JB Shaw.
> If I
> turned in a paper with "colour" and "maximise" all over the place, my
> English teacher would mark them as misspelled, even though maybe I'm from
> England and they might even be printed on A4 paper.
>
That depends on how minded your place of education is; where I
went to university, they were quite happy to let American students
to submit their work in American English; I wonder why :-). But in
any case, you are confusing the issue; if you were going to quote a
British author in your paper and 'corrected' the spelling in the quote
to American, you would be marked down for misquoting, in quotes
you are not even allowed to correct typos; and what you are after is
more akin to this case than to the example you provided. But do
not worry, I do not expect your replies to use British spelling :-).
> Why one would want to is quite simple: I'm working with some people from
> India and they author stuff with en-GB spellings and such. They send their
> docs over, I edit them, append, and send them back. It's called
> "collaboration."
Well, I suggest that you agree to use en-US as the common
language for the project, it will save you a lot of work. If they refuse,
perhaps you yourself could could use en-GB :-), otherwise you will
need to apply the procedure I described in an earlier email, using
en-US dictionary to check en-GB content is really not a good idea.
> Also, I honestly don't care what words the author has as
> custom-ignored and custom-added. If they're not in my dictionary, then
> they're wrong and squiggled. Period.
I fully agree with that
> Another case: I open up a german doc in a English WP. Are the german words
> misspelled? Yes they are, even if lang="de-DE" *unless* I have a de-DE
> dictionary.
Rubbish; this is a classical case of three-state logic: right, wrong,
unknown; we should resist the temptation to say that what we do
not know is wrong, this sort of an attitude stifles progress :-). I
would be greatly irritated to have German words squiggled when I
know that they are spelled correctly, just because I do not have a
German dictionary installed, and I doubt that you will have any use
for the 'correct' options that the en-US spellchecker will offer you
(or perhaps changing 'fahrt' to 'fart' sound reasonable?).
>I couldn't give a crap about what langauge/locale the doc was
> authored in,
That is very sad. This is a kind of an attitude that gives certain
nations a bad name, perhaps AW should be a little bit more broad
minded.
>only the one I'm displaying it in.
I am afraid you have no choice in this matter, you are displaying it
in the language it was written in. You may not like it, that is indeed
entirely up to you.
Sorry, Dom, could not resist a bit of sarcasm, do not take it too
personally.
Tomas
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