Translations of bzr-explorer

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Algis Kabaila writes:
 > Philippe,
 > On Thursday 15 October 2009 08:12:11 Philippe Lhoste wrote:
 > > On 14/10/2009 00:41, Algis Kabaila wrote:

 > > > E&xit  ---> &Quitter
 > > > Bazaar Explorer &Help ---> &Aid de Bazaar Explorer
 > > >
 > > > What does the special character & mean?
 > >
 > > In Windows at least, when the right option is checked (it was by default
 > > before XP), the character preceded by this symbol is underlined.
 > 
 > Ah, that brings to my memory Delphi menus. It makes sense that it probably 
 > means the same thing in the Linux world.
 > 
 > If and only if (iff) that is the case, I will need to go through
 > the translation again and either eliminate all &, or keep the same
 > letter after it.

AFAIK, the '&' only affects menu accelerators, and in fact defines
them.

What this means technically is that (1) the letter after the '&' is
underlined to indicate it is an accelerator, (2) when in the menu,
that letter can be used to invoke the action with one keystroke (that
is, the '&' in the menu actually binds that key to the action), and
(3) it does not affect the meaning of that keystroke in other menus or
when no menu is active.

What this means to the translators is that they are free to choose any
character for the accelerator.  There are two plausible strategies,
then.  First, choose the same character as in other languages,
especially English since that is the most commonly implemented
language.  This probably is only a reasonable heuristic in
multilingual cultures (Swiss, Belgian, Quebec) where people are likely
to be switching keyboards.

Second, choose the same character as in other applications where that
function is defined in *your* language.  Note how this applies to
"E&xit" vs. "&Quitter" in the French example.

The secondary criterion is the difficulty of typing the character.
You probably want to avoid deadkeys etc., of course, and the more
annoying a mistaken action would be, the harder it should be to type.
Eg, in most applications quitting is quite expensive, as it takes time
to save open files, close windows, etc.  If you didn't really want to
quit, starting up often takes seconds.  So quitting should be hard to
do.  Putting it on a "little finger key" or even a multiple keystroke
character might not be a bad idea (if supported).

HTH.

Regards,
Steve