LibreOffice and key names

l10n
#1

Hi all,

sorry for a little off-topic, but It's a i18n /l10n issue and maybe
other languages have the same problem.

Currently, LibreOffice take key names from OS. That is, it can't be
localized at LibreOffice side. I'm talking about "Shift, Control, Alt,
Backspace, Print Scren,..." key names strings.

IMHO it's a bad approach. There are countries using the same keyboard
for several languages. For example:in Spain the same keyboard is used
to type in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Asturian. A LibO
user with Catalan UI spects to get key names in Catalan when is
working in LibreOffice, not in Spanish, French or English.

Also, some OSes (read MS Windows) have the key names hardcoded at
keyboard driver [1], so there is a single string for key is available.
So languages without an own keyboard doesn't have any chance to get
key names translated.

I will open a bug/feature request at bugzilla to make keys names
translatable at LibreOffice side. Whom can I assign it?

Any hint?

Best regards,

Joan Montané

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/03/26/1950492.aspx

#2

Hi all,

sorry for a little off-topic, but It's a i18n /l10n issue and maybe
other languages have the same problem.

Currently, LibreOffice take key names from OS. That is, it can't be
localized at LibreOffice side. I'm talking about "Shift, Control, Alt,
Backspace, Print Scren,..." key names strings.

IMHO it's a bad approach. There are countries using the same keyboard
for several languages. For example:in Spain the same keyboard is used
to type in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician and Asturian. A LibO
user with Catalan UI spects to get key names in Catalan when is
working in LibreOffice, not in Spanish, French or English.

Also, some OSes (read MS Windows) have the key names hardcoded at
keyboard driver [1], so there is a single string for key is available.
So languages without an own keyboard doesn't have any chance to get
key names translated.

I will open a bug/feature request at bugzilla to make keys names
translatable at LibreOffice side. Whom can I assign it?

Any hint?

In my view, key names are the names as they appear on the keys of the
keyboard. So in your example where you use one keyboard for different
languages, the names of the keys remain the same. So it makes perfectly sense
to get these names from the OS, provided the user entered the right ID of the
keyboard, which contains these names, in the OS. The functions of these keys
is a different matter, they may change from language to language.

#3

Thanks Freek for feedback, :slight_smile:

Currently we can localize every key name at help. Englsh help has
English key names, Spanish help has Spanish key names, and so on.

The help doesn't keep the names of any keyboard layout, so the keys
have a proper name in every language (shift, mayúsculas, majúscules,
maiusculo,...).

Key names at LibO GUI can't be localized. I think it's missing
feature. Other big projects, like Firefox, allow to localize these
strings.

Best regards,
Joan Montané