[publican-list] RFC: Make -langs=en-US the default language for command line args

[Ruediger Landmann]

On 06/03/2010 08:52 AM, Jared Morgan wrote:
>> We removed this because we got disgusted with the complete inability of
>> writers to give any consideration or concern for translation. When
>> writers start displaying the ability to think of other people we will
>> add this back in.
>>      
> So, in summary, users should continue to use aliases for common publican publishing tasks. Not a problem. Thanks Jeff.
>    

The problem here is that "common publishing tasks" differ really 
significantly between somebody writing their XML in English, somebody 
writing their XML in French, and somebody translating any language to 
any other language. Publican has a diverse user base, and it's becoming 
more diverse all the time. I guess the reason why I'm uncomfortable with 
this suggestion is that it privileges one group of users over every 
other group.

Furthermore, speaking only for myself, since I currently publish a large 
number of docs in a large number of different languages, I actually like 
the safety-net of when Publican tells me "you didn't say which language 
you wanted, dufus". If Publican silently defaulted to building (or 
worse, publishing!) the English version of a document every time I 
forgot or mistyped the option, I would have made a non-trivial number of 
non-trivial stuff-ups by now :)

However, for anyone who is typically only ever building and publishing 
in one language and wants to save themselves some keystrokes, aliasing 
some commands is a neat solution.

Cheers
Rudi