Re: localization of Grub

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 02:19:09PM +0200, Carles Pina i Estany wrote:
> > 
> > This is wanted but nobody did work on this yet afaik.
> > It would be good if there would be multiple keyboard layouts too I
> > think.
> 
> I think that different keyboard layouts it's even more important than
> different languages...
> 
> Do we have any plan? Maybe I will take a look (but during 20 days in
> october I will not have lot of time :-( so not sure if I will do it
> after October or not, I will see...)
> 
> Any suggestion for the implementation? How user would change the
> keyboard layout? Or maybe at beginning some setting (variable) at
> grub.cfg?

Hi,

It's very nice you want to work on localisation.  This is a very welcome
feature (and I think it's been discussed before).

(I assume we're talking about a gettext equivalent rather than keyboard
layouts, which is a separate -but also nice- feature)

My recommendation for a roadmap (please comment/discuss/challenge/etc!) would
be:

  - gettextise the util tools, so they can be translated as normal programs.

  - add support to grub (a gettext module or so) so that it can load our .mo
    files and obtain strings from it, by implementing gettext() (aka _()).

I'd also recommend making the user interface similar to posix locales, for
consistency's sake (which you know I hold dearly ;-)).

Even if you only have time/interest to implement the first part, this is
already a significant benefit.  Keep in mind that grub.cfg generation is done
by update-grub which happens entirely on userland, so we get translated menu
entries that way.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."