From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 18 15:27:28 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id PAA06027 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jan 1995 15:27:28 -0800 Received: from vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de (vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de [192.48.107.36]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with ESMTP id PAA05965 for ; Wed, 18 Jan 1995 15:25:36 -0800 Received: (from jhs@localhost) by vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de (8.6.9/8.6.9) id AAA10750; Thu, 19 Jan 1995 00:24:35 +0100 Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 00:24:35 +0100 From: Julian Howard Stacey Message-Id: <199501182324.AAA10750@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> To: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: CVS stuff Reply-To: jhs@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > From: John Beukema > It would make life a great deal easier for those of us overseas if the > English string messages could be isolated in a string table. Source code > could be commented and/or meaningful int #defines provided for debugging > (#define 11 BUSERR_COREDMP. err_msg[11] = "Bus err core dumped") > The set of English strings could be translated by anyone wishinbg to > internationalize a version just by setting an alternate string table. > Messages could be improved (in any language) by updating the string table. I spent most of a year in Summer 85 - Summer 86, automating the production of 7 European Languages, 2 machine architectures, & several op system releases, for a major Unix vendor. The `just' in `just by setting an alternate string table' is over-simplification, it's not exactly fun work either, If you (John) want to do this massive, never ending, rather boring job for free, I can only applaud your public spirit :-) If you seriously can devote the hundreds of hours to repetively editing the entire ever changing source tree, & have good internet access to enable you to personally do the tens of thousands of cvs updates splitting every .c into a .c & several .h (that will probably be necessary) Then IF all the above is true, AND if the core team are prepared to allow their OS development to be slowed, by periodic test, recompiles, updates, fixes in various languages ... IF THEN I guess the core team might be well advised to consider making facilities available to you, to enable the effort :-) Further, before one invest too much time worrying about mere Latin alphabet conversions, don't forget Cyrillic & Japanese Kanji, & 16 bit wchars etc :-) Personally I would only do it, IF a firm waved many large denomination $$ at me ! At which point I'd be delighted to, I might add :-) --- Julian Stacey , ( is a dial up )