From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:59:03 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: New post.
X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/45484dd87ee83d0a7a0c99dcbfa127db61114d07?ds=sidebyside

New post.
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diff --git a/blog/data/2012-08-10-docbook-nb.txt b/blog/data/2012-08-10-docbook-nb.txt
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+Title: Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...
+Tags: english
+Date: 2012-08-10 21:00
+
+<p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
+the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
+this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
+also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
+this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
+with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
+correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
+case for the language
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
+am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
+
+<p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
+because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
+all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
+dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
+of them do not handle it at all.</p>
+
+<p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
+this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
+variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
+two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
+is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
+Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
+many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
+is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
+In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
+alias for 'nb'.</p>
+
+<p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
+understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
+(BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
+language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
+recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
+'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
+code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
+at the same time. :(</p>
+
+<p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
+take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
+processors. :(</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>