[publican-list] RFC: Make -langs=en-US the default language for command line args

[Joshua Wulf]

On 06/03/2010 10:21 AM, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
> On 06/03/2010 08:52 AM, Jared Morgan wrote:
>>> We removed this because we got disgusted with the complete inability of
>>> writers to give any consideration or concern for translation. When
>>> writers start displaying the ability to think of other people we will
>>> add this back in.
>> So, in summary, users should continue to use aliases for common 
>> publican publishing tasks. Not a problem. Thanks Jeff.
>
> The problem here is that "common publishing tasks" differ really 
> significantly between somebody writing their XML in English, somebody 
> writing their XML in French, and somebody translating any language to 
> any other language. Publican has a diverse user base, and it's 
> becoming more diverse all the time. I guess the reason why I'm 
> uncomfortable with this suggestion is that it privileges one group of 
> users over every other group.
>
> Furthermore, speaking only for myself, since I currently publish a 
> large number of docs in a large number of different languages, I 
> actually like the safety-net of when Publican tells me "you didn't say 
> which language you wanted, dufus". If Publican silently defaulted to 
> building (or worse, publishing!) the English version of a document 
> every time I forgot or mistyped the option, I would have made a 
> non-trivial number of non-trivial stuff-ups by now :)
>
> However, for anyone who is typically only ever building and publishing 
> in one language and wants to save themselves some keystrokes, aliasing 
> some commands is a neat solution.
>
> Cheers
> Rudi
>
>
I think this is an argument in favour of user configurable 
publican.defaults. That way everyone can set it up the way they want.