[Scummvm-devel] Including README translations

[Filippos Karapetis]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Simon Sawatzki <SimSaw at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > What version of Windows are you using? The README works fine with Notepad
> > for me, both with Windows 7 and Windows XP.
> > It worked correctly for fuzzie with Windows 2000.
>
> I meant one of the translated readmes (so either Liesmich.txt or
> LisezMoi.txt). When I open them as I get them in raw from git from the doc
> folder, then I get the wrong characters. Should you have been aware that I
> am not talking about these documents, that's it's really strange that you
> don't get this mistake. I for my part first have to add the three bytes EF
> BB BF via hex editor to make it work.


I was referring to these two documents (Liesmich and LisesMoi), of course,
since the original README does not have Unicode characters, it's plain
ASCII. The files work fine for me, and I don't need the 3 BOM bytes you
mentioned to read them properly.


> I just said it worked some days ago. Now I tested with the recent
> development version created by buildbot and it doesn't work anymore, so the
> change must have been quite recent.
>
>
That's odd, was the version you mentioned the daily version? What error are
you getting?


> Well, I don't fully agree with Max in some points, but in his good-bye
> email he said some very wise points one of which is: Don't say "Why do you
> care?"
>

I didn't say "Why do you care". I said "Who uses Windows 9x nowadays, as
it's a dead OS". Quite different, don't you think?

  For me personally, it is an advantage to support as many OS'es as
> possible. Some people suggested in the past even to add support for DOS
> (personally, I'd be happy if ScummVM ran one day with MS-DOS 1.0 although I
> never got a that old version :) ). Moreover, the same thing could be said to
> any other OS: "Oh come on, you are using Linux? It's oudated, use Windows
> instead!" (said the greedy manager of a certain company)
>

And we would need a way to rewrite SDL for DOS to do that. Not an easy task
at all. Of course we want to support as many operating systems as possible,
but the amount of work needed for a DOS version is simply too much for the
few people who will ever need it. That said, if anyone wants to work on a
DOS port, we're always happy to have more helping hands. But noone has up to
now, for the aforementioned reasons.


>   Filippos, for your inormation: I'm using Windows XP and Vista mainly, so
> you don't need to say it's time to change. I just happen sometimes to use
> older OS'es for retro reasons. I would be glad if we could keep these OS'es
> support so that I can use ScummVM when using such a retro system.
>

Fair enough, but you didn't specify that initially :) Sorry for the sarcasm,
but you did imply that a lot of people are still using Windows 98, and that
we should re-encode all of the translated README files just for this reason.
And I said that supporting a long-dead OS does not justify that action.


> First, as far as I know, the translated readme files are in UTF-8 encoding
> (without header). I don't know if Notepad++ supports UTF-8 too.


 I just said it does? UTF8 IS Unicode, btw.


> Secondly, I don't want to give users the burden to install extra software
> to use ScummVM. If we start that, imagine you need to install seven other
> programmes as a ScummVM newbie before you can run ScummVM for the first
> time. Second, it's harder to get internet access on these systems. And
> transfering data may also be harder (especially on Win 95 as there was no
> USB support if I remember correctly). Third, Windows 95 and higher already
> do have editors and if converted to ANSI, there is no problem. And
> converting can be done automatically via script, so I don't see big problems
> and reasons to pass on the problem to the user.
>

But these people can happily use and read the English README. And as I
mentioned, they can use a text editor that supports Unicode to read these
files.
So again, I do not see a reason to reencode our non-English documents for
people using a dead OS, want to download ScummVM, do not want to download
a text editor that supports Unicode and do want to read a README file that
is not in English. If you can clearly demonstrate that such people exist,
then by
all means feel free to tell us otherwise.

Regards
Filippos

-- 
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde
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