[WG: I18N & L10N] Having a locale as default for others in the same language

[Matthew Jones]

I would agree with Sam,

There are 5 countries that have a French specific locale setting and all
are in Europe; Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. [1] I'd have to guess
all of those countries would take fr_FR over fr_CA but if they took fr_FR
as it was, they would also have to accept date formatting (which may or may
not be the same) as well as currency and other internal formatting. Or
they'd have to take their fr_* setting and have it fall back to English
since there is no fr available instead.

This was the problem with es, but it was worse because there are 20 es
countries, and they for sure have more non language variations and
significantly more overlap with (most likely) es_ES. I think the same could
be said for Arabic as well.

I don't have any investment in French specifically either (as I did with
Spanish), and maybe nobody from the French speaking areas of Belgium or
Switzerland want to run Sakai, but if I was voting, I'd say that fr_FR is a
better fallback for everyone (fr_CA) included that English. And to
accomplish that without an fr fallback seemed to be a technical challenge.
I'm personally happy with fr_FR being the default Sakai fr language. Just
as I'm happy with en_US being the default Sakai en language. (And es_ES
being the default Sakai es language)

I think those are just decisions that need to be made without trying to
compromise on minimum coverage. Maximum coverage with individual overrides
is easier. ;)

[1] http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/javase7locales-334809.html


On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Sam Ottenhoff <ottenhoff at longsight.com>
wrote:

>
>> French from Canada and France a really different, using one as default
>> for the other would, in my opinion, be a mistake.
>
>
>
> Absolutely.  So my next question would be, what about French from Belgium
> and French from Switzerland?  I assume they would want to use fr_FR as a
> base with a few country-specific overrides, no?
>
>
>
>> When there was only fr_CA available in Sakai, my users were uncomfortable
>> with it. I suppose it would be the same the other way around if fr_FR
>> becomes the default. I would gladly create a shared fr locale if I had
>> fr_CA owners who could meet with the fr_FR team to agree on shared part of
>> the translation, but none are available AFAICT.
>>
>
> I don't understand why fr_CA owners need to be involved at all.  If fr_CA
> doesn't keep their translation up to date, they get English text as a
> fallback currently, right?  Is fr_CA so distinct that English text is a
> better fallback than French?
>
> I don't have investment in this area.  It just seems like this is bad
> policy.
>
> --Sam
>
>
>
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