Re: Proposal: Translator comments for GLADE and schema files inseparate file

[Danilo Segan <danilo gnome org>]

Christian Rose <menthos@gnome.org> writes:

>> One way around this would be to add a feature to intltool that
>> extracts all the translatable strings from the XML files and writes
>> them to a file, say, "translatable-strings.h". This file isn't used
>> for anything when compiling, but since the strings here are
>> encapsulated in C code, it's possible to add translator comments,
>> which intltool-update will pick up and put in the pot.
>
> Isn't this exactly how intltool-update XML string extractions already
> works?

Yes it is (actually, this is what intltool-extract does).  

The problem with Glade in particular is that there's no support in
Glade itself for doing it (as you explained in the bug report).
Hacking intltool is fairly easy, but when it comes to Glade, it
probably requires a more determined hacker with at least some
experience of the Glade codebase.

The solution Ã…smund suggests is not going to work: it's trivial to
add support in intltool-extract to get translators comments (I've
already submitted that patch to intltool@freedesktop.org, it's been
discussed there, something along that lines will probably be applied
after 2.6 goes out) from XML files.  Yet, Glade has this nasty
"feature" to lose all the comments once it reads the file in, and
saves it back.  So, programmers would have to manually re-add all the
comments after every change to .glade file.

Not exactly your dream scenario, isn't it?

So, it would be nice if anyone takes a look at Glade side of things.
On intltool side, we can go with any reasonable approach, so as soon
as Glade sorts it out, there won't be any obstacles to getting this.

Please comment on the bug report instead if you've got any ideas
about this (mailing lists tend to be black holes when it comes to
feature requests).

Cheers,
Danilo