[UbuntuWomen] Gender specific pronouns in applications

[Ireene-Sointu]

Hello!
I would like this to be taken into account if/when anything relating to 
gender pronouns is determined:
per = she or he
pers = her or his
pershelf = herself or himself
This would do away with a need to differentiate genders for those people 
who do not want it; who want to emphasize our common humanity rather 
than our differencies like I do.

With best wishes,
Ireene-Sointu

Legally, one personal name: Ireene-Sointu. No surname. No title.


12.03.2012 08:52, Jennie Petoumenou kirjoitti:
> Hello again,
> I guess the main reason why I joined this mailing list today was to 
> ask a very specific question:
> Has there ever been a discussion about using gender-specific pronouns 
> in applications?
> E.g., if your username is jennie, your online status should read "She 
> is busy", "ocupada??" in Spanish. If it's John it should be "He is busy".
>
> Personally, I've grown tired of having to use complicated he/she 
> structures whenever I translate into Greek. Especially when I see what 
> great pains developers have taken to avoid using complicated 
> singular/plural structures. These days, dialogs don't say "13 
> second(s) remaining". They either say "1 second remaining" or "13 
> seconds remaining". And if your language has a different conception of 
> plurality, this is also accommodated  (for polish,there is a  binary 
> plural for "2 seconds remaining") . So, how come I cannot have "She is 
> busy" or "She has won the game"?
>
> Like I said, I don't really know if this idea has ever been discussed 
> before. But I would like to see it being discussed, not just for FOSS, 
> but for all software. And I would really like to see some concrete 
> proposals from people with better coding skills than myself.
>
> What I have been envisaging is this: Every time you're asked to create 
> a username (mostly in messaging applications and games), you would 
> also be asked "What pronoun would you like to use with this username?" 
> And your options would be all the grammatically correct options 
> available in your language. E.g., in German and Greek it would be 
> masculine, feminine, neutral, in both singular and plural. Thus 
> covering a range of choices, including nicknames based on inanimate 
> objects or couples having joint acounts. Moreover, such an approach 
> would alleviate many privacy and discrimination concerns, as opposed 
> to a question like "Are you male or female?"
> As for the technical side of things, I suppose that the 
> singular/plural differentiation and localisation infrastructure would 
> provide a good starting point for this.
>
> Jennie
>
>
>
>
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