More g-d-u l10n.xml tips :)

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Shaun,

Here are more things that might improve translation of l10n.xml.

First off, intltool starting with 0.33 (if I remember correctly when
we introduced a real XML parser into -extract component as well)
should be able to handle XML in comments as well, so you can rewrite
your comments and instead of eg. 

"To insert the digit, simply write left angle bracket, digit, slash,
right angle bracket." 

say something like

"To insert the digit, simply write <digit/>." 


Next off, I am not sure how feasible this suggestion is, but by using
xml:space="preserve" on tags containing <msgid>s and <msgstr>s, PO
handling utilities will usually put them out as

msgid "\n"
"    <msgid>glossentry.tooltip</msgid>\n"
"    <msgstr>Read the definition for ‘<glossterm/>’.</msgstr>\n"
"  "

instead of the current:

msgid ""
"<msgid>glossentry.tooltip</msgid> <msgstr>Read the definition for "
"‘<glossterm/>’.</msgstr>"

(where spaces are ignored).  Of course, we are now already entering
the area of where readability of .in file is conversely proportional
to the readability of extracted transltable messages, so I am not sure
if this suggestion is worth it.

I.e. for translators, the best output would be gotten from:

<msgset>
  <msgid>glossentry.tooltip</msgid>
  <_msg xml:space="preserve"><msgid>glossentry.tooltip</msgid>
<msgstr>Read the definition for ‘<glossterm/>’.</msgstr></_msg>
</msgset>

And while I am not sure if this will break anything in stylesheets,
it certainly breaks the formatting for you as a coder.  However, it
will get extracted as:

msgid ""
"<msgid>glossentry.tooltip</msgid>\n"
"<msgstr>Read the definition for ‘<glossterm/>’.</msgstr>"

a much more readable variant of the same message.

Cheers,
Danilo