[freeciv-i18n] Re: [FreeCiv-Cvs] jdorje: Convert files from ISO-8859-1, ISO-

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 04:56:56PM +0000, Duarte Loreto wrote:
> Hello, Keld
> 
> Either you missed the point or I didn't understand what you are saying...
> 
> Chris needs to translate po files in UTF-8. His system is not UTF-8 enabled. 
> So, he needs to convert UTF-8 files to ISO-8859-1 for translation update and 
> then reconvert them to UTF-8 to store in CVS. This is easyer than updating 
> his system to be fully UTF-8 compliant.

I understand what you are advocating. I do occationally convert po files
between iso-8859-1 and utf-8. I am just saying that the need is
a bad one in the first place, if he prefers to edit his source in
iso-8859-1 in the first place, then the cvs system  and the i18n of
freeciv should allow this. Furthermore iso-8859-1 is an interenational
standard, while it is dubious wheteher utf-8 is an international
standard, or just a standard made by the industrial consortium Unicode.

> If a project decides that all translations should be done in UTF-8, as it 
> seems to be the trend, I don't see why having people with "old configured" 
> machines should stall the progress of using a better encoding. And for a 
> packaging prespective, it's easyer (and faster) to create build scripts that 
> take as granted all po files will use the same enconding (UTF-8) than using 
> iconv over each translated file.

UTF-8 need not be progress, but a deroute into vendor-dominated specifications.
For packaging it is just a question of a few extra commands and a few
more seconds to package the program with the source files in different
encodings, a practice that has been working without problems for a long
time. With mandatory utf-8 you are removing flexiblity and creating
unneccesary problems for a number of translators.

Best regards
Keld