Re: proposal for MIME behavior in GNOME

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Hi Murray,

Sorry for late reply.

Murray Cumming Comneon com writes:
>> 
>> It's impossible to use "Edit with %s" or "Open with %s" or 
>> "View with %s", because that wouldn't work in many languages.
>
> Can we do it if we don't try to pretend that it is a real sentence? If "Edit
> with" was a menu item (like "Save As"), and the applications were a sub menu
> under that, would you have the same objection?

Yes, at least partly. Even if it's separated into submenu, people
would read it as complete sentence, so "Edit with" -> "Emacs" would
still require "Emacs" to change form (i.e. it would not be simply
"Emacs" as written in .desktop Name field).

Of course, this is _better_ than the previous, but still far from
perfect (or at least a reachable goal).

> If yes, is there any single-menu-item string that could also work, such as
> "Edit With: gedit".

Yes, this would work as well as for English, and this is the approach
usually taken in translation of such strings (no matter if English
string is like that or not). So, this kind of solution would not need
any change in original strings -- translators would have to translate
it only like:
 msgid "Edit With %s"
 msgstr "Edit With: %s"

I just want to point out that English need not suffer for this kind
of "solution" -- it just requires more attention from translators.


This is along the same lines like suggesting to use "Files opened: %d"
instead of "%d files opened" when you're arguing against/for plural
forms. It *is* acceptable to have "Files opened: 1", but what do you
prefer: "1 file opened"/"7 files opened" or this 'universal' solution?

The first would work, but it's much (did I mention MUCH? :) nicer to
see the second -- at least programmers seem to think so, and I think
so too. 

So, if it's possible to make it look as good in other languages as it
is possible in English -- which I think it is -- I would like to see
that happen; I don't want to see English strings become worse just so
translators wouldn't have what to complain about :-)


Cheers,
Danilo