I now use GNOME from day-to-day in my secondary language (Thai). I've found it has helped me practice reading/typing Thaiscript (a non-Roman alphabet) and is improving my Thai vocabulary. However, from time-to-time I come across a translated error message (in Thai) that I don't understand (yet!). Wouldn't it be great if I could switch the displayed language of all the GNOME applications on the screen with a language switcher applet, as easily as you can switch the keyboard layout between US and Thai (and British when I need a pound sign!). Not only would it let me get on quicker, but it would also help me improve my language skills, as I could spend a moment each time I get stuck flicking between the two languages and learn the words and the meaning of the phrases without having to resort to the dictionary :)
I can think of tons of cases where this feature would be useful and it would be yet another cool feature that all the other desktops don't have (yet, afaik). So, I'm just wondering if it can be done and what would be involved. Has this kind of thing been discussed before somewhere/sometime? If so, where? How feasible is it? What mechanisms would need to be put in place for it to work? Can a program be made to change its LANG, regather it's translations and relabel all it's widgets on the fly easily enough? Could it work in a similar way to how changing the GTK+ theme notifies all the running GNOME apps? Answers, dammit! :) -- Ross _______________________________________________ gnome-i18n mailing list gnome-i18n@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-i18n