1279939 - Change name of the language from "Oriya" to "Odia" in embedded code in our codebase

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1275476 +++

Govt. of India has made minor changes to name of State and Language. This is old news and needs corrections in all Mozilla software products where this language is referred to. This is with reference to Oriya language. The changed name of "Oriya" language is "Odia". Also, correspinding platforms needs to change this. For instance Pootle currently refers to it as "Oriya". 


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Searching for "Oriya" produces a number of hits in various graphics and intl frameworks that we use (harfbuzz, skia, freetype2, icu, cld translation stuff, maybe others).

What needs to happen to get those libraries updated? Apparently the change is quite old, maybe newer versions have already made the switch? Milan/Jonathan/Jeff, do you know?

Comment 1

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Are there cases where the name of the language is displayed to users by any of those libraries? If it's just the internal name of a symbolic constant (such as harfbuzz's HB_SCRIPT_ORIYA or ICU's USCRIPT_ORIYA), there is no reason to change these just because the GoI decided to use a different romanization.

Spellings of things like language names -- especially when they're based on transliteration of a name that is native to a language using a different script -- are subject to change, but for symbolic names within code, stability is probably more important than following political whims.

(Note, for example, that all the Unicode characters for the script are named ORIYA LETTER/SIGN/etc..., and the Unicode stability policy guarantees that these will NOT be changed, ever.)

The language name does show up in Preferences (in the Content / Fonts / Advanced... dialog), so perhaps we should consider changing it there. I'm not sure, though, whether the "Odia" spelling has really become the standard or most widely-accepted form throughout the English-speaking world, or what the criteria should be for making such a change.

Comment 2

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Visible preferences are covered by bug 1279910.

Comment 3

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

User-facing strings, sure, but internal constants etc aren't worth our time.

In particular when it comes down to India. I heard that lots of Indians call Mumbai Bombay, for example.

I personally consider this WONTFIX, TBH.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (away/busy until Mar 10)]

(In reply to Axel Hecht [:Pike] from comment #3)
> User-facing strings, sure, but internal constants etc aren't worth our time.
> 
> In particular when it comes down to India. I heard that lots of Indians call
> Mumbai Bombay, for example.
> 
> I personally consider this WONTFIX, TBH.

Great, then there's a record/decision, let's go do that. :-)