[RFC] New category proposal, i18n

[Thomas Abthorpe]

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On June 19, 2009 02:50:12 am Doug Barton wrote:
> Thomas Abthorpe wrote:
> > I would like to propose a new ports category, i18n, it would become the
> > new home, physical or virtual, for ports that are i18n or l10n based.
> >
> > While researching the topic, I found the two terms, i18n and l10n, are
> > often used interchangeably, and while either word could be used as the
> > new category name, I chose i18 because it seems to keep in line with the
> > efforts of freebsd-i18n team.
>
> While I (as an ignorant 'merican) would tend to agree with you that
> the terms are close in meaning, my experience is that the people who
> care about the differences _really_ care about them. Rather than have
> FreeBSD appear to take a position on the debate I would suggest that
> we use a term that is both neutral and more descriptive, like
> "localization" or something similar.

It was my original thought to use localization as the category nane (and 
certainly something I would still hear arguments for), localization *is* 
l10n. While simply using internationalization seems misleading, the use of 
i18n carries a more direct conveyance.

I posted an email to freebsd-i18n@ yesterday after posted this original 
message. I asked interested parties to weigh in on the matter.

>
> That said I think that anything we can do to encourage localization as
> a goal we should do.
>
> > Currently in the ports tree there are about 220 ports with i18n or l10n
> > as part of their package name. Of these ports 159 are in the misc
> > category, virtually all of which are related to KDE or Qt.
> >
> > Should this new category come to being, the self identified ports in misc
> > would get relocated. All other ports would simply be extended with the
> > new virtual category name.
>
> You've probably already covered this, but are you making a distinction
> between ports that are used to _do_ localization-related tasks, and
> ports that are localized versions of existing ports?

It is my intention for ports that do localization related work would remain in 
their existing category, and if appropriate we could add the new name to 
CATEGORIES.

Identified i18n/l10n ports outside of the misc category, would remain in their 
substantive cateory, and be extended to include the new category name. For 
instance

www/dillo-i18n
www/drupal5-i18n
www/firefox-i18n
www/firefox3-i18n
www/zope-i18nlayer

would all remain in in www, then we would have the CATEGORIES include i18n (or 
whatever)

>
>
> hth,
>
> Doug

Thomas

- -- 
Thomas Abthorpe		| FreeBSD Committer
tabthorpe at FreeBSD.org	| http://people.freebsd.org/~tabthorpe
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