Re: GIMP menu items (was: Discussion topics for GU4DEC BoF)

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

Sven Neumann <sven@gimp.org> writes:

[...]

> > This is a real pain. All the instances of "/Edit/" need to
> > synchronized, and the translation for "/Edit/Stroke" and "Stroke"
> > can't be reused. And the translations have to obey the syntax so it's
> > possible to screw up. I've done that in the past, it's difficult
> > avoiding errors with such a large message catalog.
> 
> GIMP will notice you on startup if you made obvious mistakes in the
> menu path translations.

Yes, I know. But the bugs got into one of the major GIMP releases
because I used to start the GIMP from the foot menu. So I didn't
notice the problem until one day I started it from a console.
Embarrassing.

> > Sven, is there any chance this could be fixed? The Danish translator
> > would at least be very grateful for that. :-)
> 
> I'm not sure if it can be changed without major efforts

Yeah, I guess quite a lot of plugins would have to be changed. But
can't it be done more or less mechanically?

The easier it is to translate the strings, the higher quality
the translations will be.

> and I think that it is important to differentiate between the menu
> path and other occurances of the same string.

But do you really need that? I haven't used it myself. Also, I've
never heard about any problems with it in any of the GNOME
applications. Of course, the menus in the GIMP are somewhat larger.

Have any of the other GIMP translators here ever used the possibility
to differentiate between menu items and other similar strings?

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/