Re: The translator credits

[François Pinard <pinard iro umontreal ca>]

[Karl Eichwalder]

> if there's no language team, the last translator might add his address
> as the Language-Team address.

Hi, Karl, and people.  We much, much favour building stronger translating
teams instead of having translators working in isolation, each alone in
his little textual domain.  This makes the Language-Team address important,
as this is where linguistic gripes should be ideally reported[1].

> > Also; all names that use a non ascii letter in their native scripts
> > must be "translatable"; even for programmers etc.

> That a good remark.  The headers lines are considerd to be encoded like
> the line in mail messages -- no 8 bit characters are allowed here
> (msgfmt doesn't check it, though...).  Unfortunately, the PO file format
> definition is a little bit hidden.

I lack the context of the original message, so I do not understand all
issues under discussion.  I do not understand what is a "translatable" name.
My feeling is that Korean PO files, for example, are written for Korean
people much more than for Americans, and I would surely welcome Korean
people to document them in proper Korean, including names.  Some scripts
have encodings which conflict with ASCII, in which case we have little
choice than to use some MIME encoding.  Otherwise, I guess it would be
rather sensible that one relies on the MIME headers in the PO file header
for the whole file, including the value fields in the header itself.
But this is surely subject to some debate!

We would need more proper documentation for it, especially since a format
revision is being discussed, from time to time.  To get proper input and
feedback, we need to well explain where we are, and where we go.  Some people
volunteered to produce drafts to work on, we should revive this project :-).

> > So if someone whose name is normally written in Arabic is listed in
> > the credits, then his name should show in Arabic for the Arabic
> > translation.

> Yes, but concerning the header lines, please Mime encode it.  The about
> box (or something) should display the names decoded.

MIME encoding would help inter-operability with other MIME tools.  I'm not
sure how PO files are being used in practice, enough to have a strong
opinion about it.  So var, a PO file is not a MIME multi-part construction,
and there is probably no strong need to have the PO file header having a
neutral encoding like for MIME messages: I would be tempted to say that
we could assume, by default, and for simplicity, that the PO file header
use the same encoding as for the remainder of the file.

--------------------
[1] Yet, SPAM control creates some difficulties, here.  Suggestions welcome!

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard