[Evolution-hackers] Re: "New" problems in Evolution (was Re: Translation problems)

[Gudmund Areskoug <fta algonet se>]

Hi,

Christian Rose wrote:
> > And what's worse is that even a context system wouldn't really solve the
> > Evolution problem, because the fundamental problem is that there is only
> > one "New" menu entry. I've thought about this and a slightly better
> > solution would be to improve the menu contents to at least be
> > self-contained inside the "New" menu:
> >
> > New -> New Mail Message            Ny -> Nytt e-postmeddelande
> > New -> New All Day Appointment        Ny -> Nytt heldagsmöte
> > New -> New Contact            Ny -> Ny kontakt
> > New -> New Contact List            Ny -> Ny kontaktlista
> > New -> New Appointment            Ny -> Nytt möte
> > New -> New Meeting            Ny -> Nytt sammanträde
> > New -> New Post Message            Ny -> Nytt postmeddelande
> > New -> New Task                Ny -> Ny uppgift
> > New -> New Folder            Ny -> Ny mapp
> > New -> New Shortcut            Ny -> Ny genväg
> > New -> New Evolution Window        Ny -> Nytt Evolutionfönster

couldn't this be handled a bit similarly to plural forms?

There would probably be a few ways available for doing it, but 
they's all have to handle context one way or the other.

Baking all possible combinations into the po files themselves would 
probably make them bloated.

Having programmers cater for all different situations in 70 odd 
languages doesn't seem ideal either.

Perhaps there's need for some kind of language specific rule files?

> > This, while still keeping the design with one common "New" menu, would
> > at least make the text information more clear since at least the menu
> > entries can use correct language.
> >
> > We should probably file a bug about this, as this is a fundamental
> > design problem in Evolution that affects every single language that has
> > genders.

This "New" problem will probably not be the last that needs special 
care. Switching from "New" to some other expression, like e. g. 
"Create" would probably only break consistency and move the problem 
on to some other languages.

Is it possible to solve this kind of problem well without a 
"linguistically aware" system, like gettext seems to be evolving into?

Perhaps this simplified example how it may perhaps be done (g for 
gender) could be a step on the way, before breaking out simplified 
languages rules into separate files:

E. g. in po:
msgid
"New"
msgstr [g1]
"Ny"
msgstr [g2]
"Nytt"
...
msgid
"Mail Message"
msgstr [g2]
"e-postmeddelande"
...
msgid
"Contact"
msgstr [g1]
"kontakt"

Apologies for bungling po's, it's monday morning ... .

Oh, and BTW: "New" is the same in English for plurals as well, which 
is not the case in many languages... and so on with all its 
linguistic implications. I'll leave combining this suggestion with 
plural forms  al. to the reader .

BR,
Gudmund