Re: kernel support for non-english user messages

Linus Torvalds
2003-04-10T02:57:36Z

In article <3E93A958.80107@si.rr.com>, Frank Davis <fdavis@si.rr.com> wrote:
>
>I wish to suggest a possible 2.6 or 2.7 feature (too late for 2.4.x and
>2.5.x, I believe) that I believe would be helpful. Currently, printk
>messages are all in english, and I was wondering if printk could be
>modified to print out user messages that are in the default language of
>the machine. For example,

This has come up before.

The answer is: go ahead and do it, but don't do it in the kernel. Do it
in klogd or similar.

I refuse to clutter the kernel with inane and fragile (and totally
unmaintainable) internationalization code. The string lookup can equally
well be done in user space where it isn't a stability and complexity
issue.

Linus