Re: gnumeric: Note to translators

[Pablo Saratxaga <pablo mandrakesoft com>]

Kaixo!

On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 02:26:28PM -0000, Morten Welinder wrote:
 
> not solve the fundamental problem that there are strings that need two
> different translations depending on context.  The current gettext just
> cannot handle this and the translator is left to flip a coin.  Thus
> our translations suck.

That msut be handled by using a prefix, and telling the translator not to touch
it; eg:

	/* note: don't touch the first two bytes (t_) only translate
	 * what is after it. Here "second" is 1/60th of a minute
         */
	printf("%s\n", _("t_second")+2 );

...

	/* note: don't touch the first two bytes (o_) only translate
	 * what is after it. Here "second" is the ordinal "2nd"
         */
	printf("%s\n", _("o_second")+2 );

then, the translatable strigns will be different.

Another possibility, harder to handle correctly, but that can be suefull when
the different contexts are well delimited, may be the use of different
textdomains.

> Typically such strings are short sentence fragments from glade dialogs

The problem of glade auto-generated files is their total lack of comments, lack
of xgettext oriented comments (like xgettext:no-c-format to stop msgfmt -c
complainging about "75%" and such), and the overuse of _() (what is the purpose
of making empty strings ( "" ), spaces, etc tralatable ?
It is even dangerous when what is so tagged are things that must not be
translated (eg: a drop down list with options for say, pppd, where the user can
choose from. translating them may lead to chaos, yet glade tags them as
translatable).

So my question: is that a known bug of Glade, that is in the TODO, or the
result of programmers not knowing how to tell glade to put some comments and to
skip making some strigns translatable ?

-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://www.srtxg.easynet.be/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0x8F0E4975