[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] Each nation having different monetary unit

[Jason Dorje Short <jshort@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reinier Post wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2001 at 06:12:36PM -0400, Baumans wrote:
> > I made a patch to allow every nation to have a
> > different monetary unit (ie. US Dollar, GB Pound).
> 
> Very nice; hoiwever, be aware that this has been done before,
> and it was turned down then.  Full discussion at

I haven't been paying much attention to this discussion, but this
prompted me to read over past posts, and I think I came up with a better
way to do this.

The earlier opposition to the idea came from people who didn't think
currency should be substituted for gold because "currency" is being
substituted for a standard "precious metal".  One person pointed out
that even the US government holds gold in reserve.  Even these opponents
didn't really say it was a bad idea, just that it should be optional. 
But really, it _is_ a bad idea.  Currency in any form wasn't used for
global trade anytime until very recently.  Using US dollars while
playing the Americans in 1000 BC is just to much to be credible.

However, customization can definitely be done here.  The code should be
the same, but the currency names put into the rulesets should be the
translation of "gold" into each particular language.  This should give
just as good a feel to the game, but it's not at all controversial or
inaccurate.  Unfortunately, I don't know "gold" in any language but my
own...the currency would remain "gold" for both the Americans and the
English while changing for all (or most) others.

Also, I really liked the idea of "mithril" for the Dunedain (although
this may not be accurate from a literary perspective, it fits because
it's a precious metal).  Other "fantasy" nations may have currencies fit
to them as well...the idea of the Mordors using "elf ears" as currency
was pretty funny.


I believe all of this can be handled automatically through translations
if we're clever.  I really don't know anything about i18n _or_ FreeCiv
rulesets, but if each ruleset had a language associated with it, e.g.

[The English Nation]
LANG = EN

then "Gold" (or "currency?gold") could just be automatically translated
into that language (once a translation was done, of course) through
something like:

char* get_currency()
{
  char* language = get_national_language();
  return dgettext(language, N_("currency?gold"));
}

and then simply used in place of the string "gold" as it is now.  This
is especially cool because other strings could be translated as well
(although offhand I can't think of anything else worth translating). 
(Later, the translation can be made a local option "Use national
dialect" or something to that effect.  A translation level could even be
set (0-10), so that if you played on the highest level just about all
strings would be translated.  This would only be for the linguistically
adept, of course.)

The only problem I can think of offhand with this is for "fantasy"
nations that have no real language - like the Dunedain, where we want
"currency?gold" to be translated to "mithril".

jason