On errno

[Marcel Moolenaar]

On Apr 1, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Gordon Tetlow wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt at mac.com>  
> wrote:
> Oh, and yes: I have been thinking about localization of the kernel.
> While I don't see this to be urgent or critical to FreeBSD itself,
> I can see a "market" for it.
>
> This is an interesting discussion in light of the recent article  
> about the "Ugly American Programmer." Basically it says that  
> programmers all understand English (or we can basically expect them  
> to), so as long as the information is for programmers (user/kernel  
> barrier qualifies in my mind), is it hugely important?

Errors are never for programmers. They are for programs or users.
Programs work less well on strings, especially when those strings
are "designed" to be printed and thus targeted towards users.
Interpretation of such error messages is just painful. On top of
that, the user may want a localized message.

When arguments in the discussion on i18n or l10n focus on the
developer, the argument is flawed by definition and pretty much
useless. Only when users are considered in such discussions will
you have a meaningful discussion.

Thus, when a developer claims that i18n is pointless, you know
that the statement can be ignored, for it puts the developer at
the center of the universe and not the user. This is still
assuming that we write an OS for users and not for developers.
The assumption may be false...

If we were to write a compiler, the "Ugly American Programmer."
article would apply. Writing an OS, I would say that it applies
partially at best (one can make a distinction between operators
and users, and operators tend to prefer english AFAICT).

Personally I'd like to think that that we write an OS for users.

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
xcllnt at mac.com