On Tuesday, April 5, 2011, 3:21:09 PM, Richard Ryniker wrote:
>On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 10:49 -0400, Genes MailLists wrote:
>> Indeed ... there is something simplistically elegant about:
>>
>> 3
>> vs
>> multi-user.target
>
>Or, you could look upon it as 'utterly cryptic'. At least
>multi-user.target takes a shot at explaining itself. 3...3, well, not so
>much.
>--
>Adam Williamson
One can reasonably argue for either scheme, though Adam might be
acused
of a desire to destroy venerable historic traditions of mystic Unix
incantations...
I should think "3" presents very little problem for
internationalization,
whereas "multi-user.target" demands translation before it "explains
itself" to non-English-speaking users. Because these are descriptive
file names, not just message text, and they are used fairly early in the
boot process, I doubt translation is easy. Feasible, certainly, but
messy and therefore unlikely to happen.
I think these should be viewed more as keywords, or reserved phrases
and not subject to translation.
This is similar to a C program, where one has 3 cases:
- Comments and literal string can have nearly any value.
- Variable names are only restricted in the character set that can be
used.
- Language keywords must conform exactly.
Having them be NLS-sensitive in a global subsystem in a multi-user
environment (where each user (or even process) is able to use a
different locale) seems to me a recipe for disaster.
Al