Re: GDB 6.4 and translations

Paul Schlie
2004-11-04T05:52:47Z

> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
>
>> Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 19:27:19 -0500
>> From: Paul Schlie <schlie@comcast.net>
>>
>> Although I don't know if it's been considered or even an issue, but it may
>> be worth trying to avoid the use of Unicode's typographical quote characters
>> in otherwise ASCII message string output on even Unicode supported platforms
>> by default
>
> Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about; please consider
> elaborating, e.g., by providing an example of such a problematic
> message.
>
> AFAIK, we don't use any non-ASCII characters in the GDB message text.
> If you know about any use of such characters in GDB, please point out
> where in the code we have them, since I believe that must be some bug.
>
> As for the translated messages, it's entirely up to the translators'
> teams to decide how they encode the text in their language. If they
> decide to use UTF-8 or some other Unicode encoding (and use Unicode
> quoting characters), there's no way we could prevent them from doing
> so. Nor do I think we should: the translators know better than we do
> what characters are supported by end-user platforms in their locale.
>
>> especially for text which may likely be subsequently parsed by tools likely
>> benefiting, and/or depending on the use of plain old ASCII quote characters.
>
> If you are talking about GDB GUI front ends, they should invoke GDB
> after setting the Posix locale anyway, since they want the messages in
> English to be able to parse them. THus, if the original messages we
> have in the code are in plain ASCII, the front ends will not have any
> problems here.
>
> Or did I miss something?

No, I don't think you're missing anything. I was simply speculating, being
ignorant of GDB's longer term internationalization plans, that it may be
wise to try to avoid the potential complications associated with the default
use of Unicode left/right quote character codes as tentatively chosen to be
used in GCC 4.0 quoted output message text on unicode supported platforms;
as although it may seem aesthetically pleasant, it's likely to create
otherwise unnecessary complications in circumstances where interface,
status, warning, and/or error messages may be parsed by subsequent tools
which may not be unicode aware.

Where given your statements, it doesn't seem to be part of GDB's present
plans, which I suspect is good; but still suspect that any translated
message text containing ASCII symbols which are anticipated to be
potentially utilized by other programs for whatever purpose, should likely
retain the original ASCII symbol codes in the text were possible by default
(even on Unicode platforms) to prevent potential subsequent complications,
if there's a choice in the matter.