[MiNT] RSL and localisation

[Bohdan Milar <bohdan@milar.name>]

Hi all,

I have some doubts about usefulness of current form of the RSL for localisation.
I mean not the idea as a whole but insufficient functionality.
I miss definition of shortcuts in dialog strings.

In RSC there are some flags (bits) for text strings.
Some of those flags set which of the string's character will act as a key shortcut.
This character is then displayed as underlined.
User can call the function (checkbox, radio, button, ...) by pressing alt+character.

I am affraid (and may be I am wrong) that localizing RSCs only by translating text strings to another language could cause 
undesirable situations in connection with unmodified shortcut bits:

1. More than one string will have set the same character as the shortcut. Example:

Original dialog have 2 buttons with shortcut on first character:
- Test
- Print
After translating to Czech, the texts will be:
- Testovat
- Tisknout
So in English, shortcuts will be "T" and "P", while in Czech it will be "T" and "T"!
Pressing alt+T running the Czech version will already activate the Testovat button.
Tisknout will be unaccessible by keyboard.


2. Some non-letter character could be use as a shortcut, e.g. space " ", comma, bracket, ...
This may not be a functional problem, but will look strange.
In some cases a character not defined on a (national) keyboard could be use.


3. When the localised string is shorter than the original, it could happen that original shortcut possition will be outside the 
new string.


And that is why I hesitate while thinking about tranlating larger projects (qed, teradesk, ...) using rsl.
I think that implementing the shortcut features to RSL will not be difficult.
May be one decimal number somewhere near the string can solve this.

Best regards,

Bohdan