[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#14343) Data: Egyptian city list

["miguel@xxxxxxxx" <miguel@xxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14343 >

On 11/3/05, William Allen Simpson <wsimpson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14343 >
>
> Benedict Adamson wrote:
> > <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14343 >
> >
> > OK, I think the idea of a separate file for city aliases, rather than my
> > suggestion, seems to have marginally more preference here, so I'll try
> > implementing that. Away for a week or so, so don't hold your breath.
> >
> I'd like to weigh in for keeping city aliases in the nations files, or
> for removing all cities into a unified city alias file.  Not both.
>
> A decision needs to be made.
>
> (1) Practical.  Too hard to maintain.  Most ancient cities have 2 or
> more names, so adding a city means updating multiple files.  Keeping all
> known information in the same file will help.  Humans are likely to
> make inconsistent decisions (the current files are already inconsistent)
> and it would be better to plan for the programming to resolve than
> depending on massive editting by multiple people.

As mentioned before, the syntax I favor is this:

{ "London",    "english", "default"
 "Londres",   "chilean"
 "Londinium", "roman"
 "Londres",   "spanish"
}

I think, IMNAAHO, this is clean and simple, and lets any nation that
doesn't have its own name for a city keep the default (London).

>
> (2) Political.  You'll have all sorts of arguments about the "canonical"
> name, the spellings, the best practices, historical precedence, etc.

Sure. Won't that be fun? :-)


> (3) Effort.  The generic "translation" project (the usual example of
> Londinium|London|Londres) requires the alias file to expand to cover
> every known permutation of language for every city.  Do we need to
> describe the parts of the city name so that translation is possible?
> Many city names are composite, that are sometimes translated as they
> are conquered, and sometimes just replaced.

Most cities don't have alternate names in every single language - for
example, Madrid and Barcelona are known with those names everywhere
(that I know of).

Most cities with composite names are cities named after saints
(Saint Nazaire->San Nazario, Sao Paulo->San Pablo, etc.) or have the
"-bourg" suffix (Estrasbourg -> Estrasburgo, etc.), so it's not that
difficult.

--
Miguel Farah
miguel@xxxxxxxx