News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

February 28, 2008

geekery

Localizing annoyance

Posted Feb. 28, ’08, 7:05 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Geekery

X5SpotlightCalculator.jpg One “feature” in Mac OS X is the option for application names to be localized. While the actual filename of an application is one thing, depending upon your current language settings the name of the application could be another. Apple’s own usage of it is inconsistent.

Truth be told, it’s a mess. You can’t refer programatically to the name of the application as it is presented to you, requiring you to try to figure out the real name. Here’s the real wacky part of it (when I first encountered this): you can rename for English as well. As such, should a developer change the naming of an app (by adding a trademark symbol, for example), they can hide it with localization, resulting in you staring at two applications named the exact same thing as far as you can tell.

It really freaked me out the first time I ran into it until I figured it out. It’s a great idea for international users, but there must be a better way to deal with this.

[via Daring Fireball]


4 Comments

krye said:

The people of Planet Earth should adopt a single, uniform language that all can understand. Let's try...say....English?

February 28, 2008 8:14 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@krye: Yeah, cause English is totally the most logically constructed and easy to learn language in the world. Esperanto FTW!

February 28, 2008 8:22 AM
Glen T said:

can't have one language. Remember the story of the Tower of Babel? I don't want to be smote dead.

February 28, 2008 9:08 AM
Alex R. said:

Un truco no apto para todos, pero revisando los nombres con la Terminal ayuda a identificar el nombre real de los archivos y los directorios. La Terminal no realiza los cambios en los nombres según el idioma seleccionado.

And now, as a compliment for those who may not try to learn another language:

Not a trick for everybody, but checking the names using Terminal can help you identify the real name of files and folders. The Terminal dows not change the names according to the selected language.

February 28, 2008 11:05 AM

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