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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Color names localization
From:       Karl-Heinz Zimmer <khz () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-06-12 15:07:07
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On Wednesday 12 June 2002 08:26, Stanislav Visnovsky wrote:
> Hi!
>
> KOffice (kofficeui/kotoolbutton.cc) contains a number of "romantic" names
> for colors, such as Goldenrod. These are totally untranslatable, since
> there is no standard for the names.
>
> I've tried specialists to help me using other color palettes, but it does
> not bring anything new, since color names are a proprietary mess.
>
> IMHO untranslated color names are not a good solution. It was pretty hard
> to even translate "Goldenrod" into Slovak. An ordinary Slovak user would
> not get it. I've used translation of "Golden" as a workround.

Just my 2 pence:

If there is no good translation of a "romantic" color name, you (IMHO)
translaters should feel free to 'invent' your own name for the respective
color!

e.g. If in your language there is no well-known equivalent to "Goldenrot"
you might just use another word (perhaps including the name of a flower
that has a similiar color...).

If no such word comes to your mind there is a fallback option: Just use
numbering like "red-1" "red-2" ..

The advantage of such "romantic" or "numbered" names is that users can
easily remember "Oh, yes, I was using the red-2 color for that part of
my drawing, let's use it for this one too...".

It is more difficult to remember that I used a special color if this is
quite similiar to another color, so I would prefer having names for them
even if it ends up in red-1, red-2 ..

In StarOffice the color-name-numbering concept works pretty well.

Cheers,
Karl-Heinz   <crawling back to bug fixing now>  :-)

Post scriptum: Are you sure there is no equivalent to "Goldenrot" in
  your language?
  There are two main colors for gold: "white gold" and "red gold" - how
  do you call the reddish gold in your language?

-- 
Karl-Heinz Zimmer, Senior Software Engineer, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB
<mailto:khz@klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se>            <mailto:khz@kde.org>

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