Notices by /dev/urandom (rnd@toot.cat)

py3-axolotl is still in testing, so no #gajim for me #alpinelinux

dear english-speaking coders:

when you add localization support into your software, make sure that every string has a description that tells what context it is seen and whether it's a description, an action, etc.

also, just because the same piece of text is used in different places in english, doesn't mean it will be in other languages

here's a simple example: "bookmark". it can be a noun or a verb. depending on the context, it can describe a bookmark a user added or the action of creating one.

or even "read", which as a verb can be present or past tense or even a past participle ("read this message", "have you read this?", "mark as read").

even microsoft, which otherwise spends a lot of time making sure its localizations are as natural as possible, sometimes falls into this trap: some msvc error messages are translated into russian too literally, with no understanding of what the english original was actually intended to say

hate being in a situation where i mostly agree with the people who say software got very bloated, but also have to remind them that a lot of things have changed that do require today's level of complexity

like unicode being normalized, and now every OS has to know how to render all sorts of scripts of different complexity

or that desktop displays other than 96 dpi are a thing (which is part of the reason why all user interfaces now use flat icons and such)

or security (a web browser from the 90s would be unable to do HTTPS, and would not isolate 3rd-party cookies and such that weren't a problem back then, but would be a big issue now)

also, it sucks that so many "cross-platform" apps are now just web apps running in electron, but that's better than having them be native apps that only run on windows (or sometimes also macOS)

and i'd say today's HTML5/JS-based web apps are still an improvement over what we had before, which, i should remind you all, was shockwave/macromedia/adobe flash (and it was an even less pleasant experience on linux)