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Re: localisation in system wide daemons



On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Steve Langasek wrote:
> AFAICS, post-processing of log messages would be the most reliable
> method to give admins localized logs while also making it feasible
> for upstreams to support user requests. Any problems that would make
> it hard to post-process English logs for localization would apply
> n-fold to post-processing non-English logs for translation back to
> English.

But this style of post-processing would occur only when there was a
support request that required an english speaker to look at the logs;
the user translating it by hand in this case (or using an appropriate
locale, or finding someone who could translate it or backtracking from
the message to english using the same mapping that the program does)
seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Post-processing seems to require a set of fragile dependencies between
the log processing software and the actual software generating the
messages unless someone standardizes on a central repository of
messages in different languages [and would make casual log checking
slightly more difficult.]

> For best results, we would have a logging protocol that logs a
> message ID plus arguments, so that formatting into English /or/ into
> other languages would follow the same, sscanf-free process. :)

And a central repository of all of the message Ids and blocks which
are assigned to speciifc programs and whatever other standards are
needed to implement it... I suppose it would be optimal, but I don't
think it'll happen anytime soon.


Don Armstrong

-- 
[A] theory is falsifiable [(and therefore scientific) only] if the
class of its potential falsifiers is not empty.
 -- Sir Karl Popper _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §21

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu



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