Subject: Re: multi-lingual support under Unix
From: Tomas Frydrych (tomas@frydrych.uklinux.net)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 11:24:47 CST
Adding Language to the formating is straight forward, you just need
to add character property 'language' to list in pp_Property.cpp and
create some interface for the user to use this property.
> But we also need a *document* language (taken from the current locale (when
> creating a new document)). This is the language "for the whole document". You
> can have sections, paragraphs, quotes &c. in different language, but only *one*
> document language. Things this could be used for:
>
> * Sorting (different language use different sorting rules, but the sorting rules
> are document-wide)
> * Default typographically correct features (e.g. in Norwegian documents, the
> default list marker should be an en-dash, not a bullet)
> * Default date&time field/language of date&time field
> * Smart-quotes (not sure if this should be document-wide or change when you
> change language of a section -- perhaps it's language-dependant!)
Actually, it seems to me that all of these are poentially language
dependent. If I have an English document with a sorted table
containing some Hebrew stuff, I definitely do not want to use
English sorting order on that table, nor do I necessarily want to use
default English bulets in Hebrew sections; same goes for Date and
Time fields, if I decide that I want a field formated in a different
language than the document language, then I would also expect it
to use the conventions of that other language. Smart quotes are
also language depended, for instance in Czech the opening quote
hangs under the line, and if I have an English document with a
Czech section within which I will have quotes, I do not want them
to be English quotes.
I do not think that for instance MS Word uses document language.
It has a default language, which is a language used when the user
does not indicate otherwise, but that is quite different. In my view
language should be a character property only.
Tomas
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