[arch-dev-public] [arch-dev] Installer and i18n

[Hugo Doria]

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Simo Leone <simo at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Well... there's a couple factors at play here. My working branch at
> code.neotuli.net has a whole ton of changes in it, and will be getting
> even more as I clean up the codebase, so any patches aren't going to
> apply cleanly for very long.

Lets wait for you to clear the codebase then. When you finish, we can
add support to i18n in the installer. Just tell me that i can work on
this.

>Also, I was wondering whether we should
> use gettext, or whether we should use bash's builtin i18n mechanism
> (which is poorly documented, but easy to use). Do you know any drawbacks
> to using it?

I found the following information:

"GNU bash 2.0 or newer has a special shorthand for translating the
string and substituting variable values in it: $ "msgid". But the use
of this construct is discouraged, due to the security holes it opens
and due to its portability problems.

The Security holes of $"..." come from the fact that after looking up
the translation of the string, bash processes it like it processes any
double-quoted string: backquote dollar and processing, like 'eval'
does."

More here: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/gettext/bash.html

-- Hugo Doria