Re: veryfying messages

[Keld Jørn Simonsen <keld dkuug dk>]

On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 11:44:30PM +0200, Gediminas Paulauskas wrote:
> On 21 Apr 2001 11:54:18 +0200, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:
> > We would like a windows manager for verifying the executed apps.
> > Running the program and clicking a text or a whole
> > page should automatically mark it as ok or wrong in the .po file.
> > We thought that it would be next to impossible to have people
> > do this by hand, so we need assistance from a general 
> > windows manager.
> 
> What do you mean by windows manager? A thing which can say if some
> message is visible or not?

My thoughts were that we need to run the application in practice
to check whether the messages are translated properly.

That is we need to run the application in a normal way.
But then we need some special tools to mark each message as ok.
This would probably then be under the windows manager, that the
application is run under. Maybe there are some other ways to do it,
I dont know, but it is when all the messages are displayed in the
running window, that the moment of truth reveals, is the translation
done properly or what?

I would then think that the most productive way of checking this
is to by eye look thru all the mesagges on the screen. If there are some
faulty ones, then one could kind of mark it in a special way
and the windows manager can go into the .po file and mark it as bad.
When finished with marking the bad ones, one could then accept the rest.
It could also be done as part of one of the normal windows managers,
as a special validation mode, as one of the right-click options.
When entering the validation mode the left click would mark errors,
and the right click would exit the validation mode.
(then you can use normal navigation to get to another page that you
want to verify).

The window manager would know in advance which .po file you would run,
or that could be setup. There is a problem with finding the messages
in the .po file, as this is not guaranteed to be unique, but in most
cases it would work, and then the WM could write an exception list for the
rest in a file. This would also work if no .po file was available.

> But it should be some compile-time option, or, better, separate tool
> that does not mean anything for a  general user.

Yes, it is not for the general user. Or what? This may be a way
to make error reports on translations. But I would be happy to
have some special tool in the first place. On the other hand, a special
option in a general WM would probably be easier to maintain in the long run.

> >From gettext point of view, this can be done as:
> 
> Hifdef I_AM_HARDCORE_TRANSLATOR
> Hdefine _(x) gettext_logged(x)
> Helse
> Hdefine _(x) gettext(x)
> Hendif
> 
> const char* gettext_logged(const char *x)
> {
>     static char *domain = NULL;
>     if (domain == NULL)
>         domain = textdomain (NULL);
>     print_to_log_file (domain, x);
>     /* or */
>     verify_message (domain, x);
>     return gettext(x);
> }

I see that this is a way to mark what you have been thru.
How do you then mark bad translations?
Maybe a combination of special gettext processing and a mark facility
in the WM?

Kind regards
Keld