moving all .po files to UTF-8

[Keld Jørn Simonsen]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 07:28:04PM +0100, Christian Rose wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld at dkuug.dk> wrote:
> >On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 01:15:48AM +0000, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> >> O/H Keld Jørn Simonsen ????????????:
> >> > On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 01:24:53AM +0000, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Rather than doing it at build time, for all the software that's 
> >translated
> >> >>> in/by Fedora, it seems simplest to do it in the .po files itself. 
> >Therefore,
> >> >>> at some point in the next few days, we intend to do this in the CVS
> >> >>> repository.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Does anyone forsee any issues with this?
> >> >
> >> > I am not happy about this, and in general I think it is the wrong way 
> >to
> >> > go. Eg. all my own tools for translation are using other charsets than
> >> > UTF-8
> >>
> >> Hi Keld,
> >>
> >> I think most people would agree that UTF-8 is the "right" way to go -- 
> >that's
> >> the reason for its existence, right? It's something that can make sure
> >> everything will work for all languages.
> >
> >maybe most people, but this is not the question, - most people already
> >have gone to UTF-8 already.
> 
> Exactly. Only a very small fraction are still using ISO-8859-* for
> their po files today, at least in most larger translation projects.
> 
> 
> >> I'm thinking that this is an opportunity for all who don't use it in 
> >their tools
> >> to start using it. :)
> >
> >It would be a backwards step for me, UTF-8 allows some characters that I
> >automatically avoid using 8859-15. Thus my translations would have
> >fewer errors not using utf-8. And my tools run 8859-15.
> 
> IIRC, you were the only one raising any big objections back in 2002
> when an upstream project (GNOME) moved to mandating UTF-8 for all po
> files [1]. If memory serves me well, the objections were the same back
> then.
> 
> Given the amount of time that this has been an issue with those tools
> you refer to, couldn't those tools have been fixed in that time? It's
> been almost 5 years...

It still gives better quality, IMHO.  Why shift to something inferiour?

And since then, I have not done much for GNOME wrt. translations. And
Danish Gnome has dropped somewhat - 2.18 is now 83 % where the latest
used to be almost 100 % translated. So it is better for the project 
overall to keep everybody on board.

Best regards
keld