galehar wrote:For internationalization, I was thinking that prompts could go through a function which would look at the first letter of each option to set the keys. In case of conflicts it would simply iterate through the letters of the word until it finds a unique one. Simple and predictable.
Do you understand that some languages have compose keys for most of their basic symbols keys print a standard latin character upon pressing? For example, this is a Japanese "standard" keyboard:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/Japanese_Keyboard.gif (yes there are "permanent" modifiers but so nobody uses capital letters by default because there is caps-lock). If a function can be made, it's far better that the key is selected by the translator in some way (older programs used to add a control character in front of the active letter in the translation string).
Still if DCSS is internationalized, you should first choose if it will use different keys for standard commands based on the language or stick to the standard ones used for the english version. Since you just support vi keys, it could be (I'm no expert in this way) that the latter option is the best one.
Maybe some mod could split this thread into an i18n one?