Re: contest dependeded meanings for yes and no

[Clytie Siddall <clytie@riverland.net.au>]

Thanks for your help with this, Nicolas :)

On 10/01/2007, at 1:15 AM, Nicolas François wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 06:05:32PM +1030, Clytie Siddall wrote:
> > Hi Praveen, thanks for raising this point. Sorry I couldn't respond
> > to it before.
> >
> > On 05/01/2007, at 12:11 AM, പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen  
> > wrote:
> > > I would like to know how other teams have solved the issue of
> > > context-sensitive meaning for 'yes' and 'no'. For example when we
> > > have different translations for yes/no choices depending on the
> > > question like
> > >
> > > do you have it?
> > > is it correct?
> > > do you want it?
> > >
> > > each will have a separate 'yes' and 'no'.
> >
> > So does my language.
> >
> > Q. "Do you have it?" (implies "yet")
> > A. "Already" or "Not yet"
> >
> > Q. "Is it correct?"
> > A. "Correct" or "Incorrect"
> >
> > Q. "Do you want it?"
> > A. "Yes" or "No"
>
> According to "info libc", the following expressions should be allowed:
> yesexpr "^([aA][lL][rR][eE][aA][dD][yY]|[cC][oO][rR][rR][eE][cC] 
> [tT]|[yY][eE][sS])"
> yesexpr "^([nN][oO]|[iI][nN][cC][oO][rR][rR][eE][cC][tT])"
>
> In this case, I would however recommend to use a shorter form since  
> there
> is no ambiguity after the first char:
> yesexpr "^[aAcCyY]"
> noexpr "^[nNiI]"
>
> I assume there may be some languages where one of the YES forms  
> starts with
> the same character than one of the NO forms. In that case, a longer  
> regex
> could be useful.
>
> Of course, the long form force the user to type more than one  
> character.
> But any application that checks the answer with rpmatch or regex  
> should
> succeed.
>
> There are probably some applications which assume there may be only  
> one
> char, but I would say they are not internationalize the right way, and
> should be fixed.
>
> > I am unsure how useful it would be to modify our locales' LC_MESSAGES
> > files to include the other answers. Mine currently has:
> > ___
> > ^[yYcC].*
> > ^[nNkK].*
> > ___
> >
> > which covers the abbreviated "Yes" and "No" in both English and
> > Vietnamese. I don't know if adding the longer forms, plus the extra
> > forms,
> > ___
> > ^[yYcCYesyesCócóRồirồiĐúngđúng].*
> > ^[nNkKNonoKhôngkhôngChưachưaSaisai].*
> > ___
>
> No, the regex is not right. It should be written:
> ^([yYcC]|Yes|yes|Có|có|Rồi|rồi|Đúng|đúng)
> and
> ^([nNkK]|No|no|Không|không|Chưa|chưa|Sai|sai)
>
> (brackets means a choice between some characters, and parenthesis with
> bars (|) means a choice between a sequence of characters).

Thanks for explaining that. I thought it looked wrong, but couldn't  
remember what to do.
> And thanks Clytie for demonstrating a language with a YES form (Có)
> starting with the same character than a NO form (Chưa) ;)
> So [cC] is not correct and shorter regex should work:
> ^([yYrRđĐ]|Có|có)
> ^([nNkKsS]|Chưa|chưa)
>
> Clytie, do you have a way to test it?
> Otherwise, I will test it later.

Unfortunately, I don't. I haven't got my (OSX) system to recognize my  
new locale yet. Is there a file (like LINGUAS or makefile.am or  
configure.in in software packages) where one needs to add new  
locales? "locale -a" just snubs me.

But if this does work, we will need to update all the available  
Vietnamese locales. Even the new CLDR one doesn't have these much  
more appropriate affirmative and negative forms.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm  
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN

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