On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 12:26:29PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I propose a patch for texinfo.texi to change the node
> @code{@@documentlanguage}, to move away from considering that US English
> is the default @documentlanguage. Instead, I think that we should
> consider that no @documentlanguage means an unspecified document
> language. The defaults would still correspond to English (or possibly
> US English when there is a difference) when defaults are needed.
>
> This is not the same as having US English as default @documentlanguage,
> for example the strings are not translated at all instead of using the
> en translation.
It is still true that English (possibly US English) strings are used in
output documents by default.
Internally, I think it would be fine to bypass any string translation
mechanisms if documentlanguage is not given, as you say.
> Note that no @documentlanguage meaning an unspecified language is
> already true for Plaintext, Info and LaTeX output, and partly for
> DocBook and HTML.
>
> The patch also removes a paragraph stating that the main dialect is
> assumed, which, as far as I can tell is not particularly true (it may
> be, but it is completly out of Texinfo).
It's relevant to users if they specify
@documentlanguage pt
whether they get Brazilian or Portuguese Portuguese. (That's the main
language with the largest regional differences, as far as I know.) If
there is a better reference about what the "main dialect" means then
we could use it.
> The next step could be to avoid setting lang attributes to en if
> @documentlanguage is not explicitly set such that language is more
> unspecified.
I think that would be ok. There could still be English in the output
file from document strings, but if the user hasn't put "@documentlanguage en"
there is no guarantee it actually is in English.
