Re: Markup in messages

["Abel Cheung" <abelcheung gmail com>]

On 7/25/06, Christian Rose <menthos gnome org> wrote:
> > Of course in most cases the proper 'fix' is to have a boldtype
> > font. But creating a boldface font is not always that easy,
> > when one is talking about complex scripts that consists of
> > at least hundreds or thousands of glyphs; and it needs quite
> > some human horsepower as well, which may not be available for
> > newly available languages in F/OSS world.
>
> I understand that problem, but I for sure don't agree that this is the
> proper way to fix it, as this hack, that is, gratiously including
> surrounding markup inside the translateable message content, causes a
> lot of problems for all translators. As a translator you want to
> translate the *content*, not the surrounding presentation. I don't
> care whether the words will be written on a billboard, a folder, or
> on-screen, the words will be the same. As Clytie explained:
[......]

I didn't say my mind clearly. What I want to say is, I don't
like such kind of hack either, but it has really existed
before. Right now such workaround is no more needed.

Abel

> Here are some ways to solve the problem of bad rendering:
>
> 1) Fix the fonts. Agreed, not an easy task.
> 2) Solve the problem at the Pango level. Instead of encouraging the
> use of <b> and <i> tags, add abstract <strong>, <em> tags/attributes
> or some such, allowing for different interpretations for different
> scripts. If we know that boldface fonts for Persian always suck,
> <strong> can have a different representation for Persian script.
> Then the HIG and other such specifications can specify these
> attributes instead of a particular font style.
>
>
> And here's how to solve the (ab)use of using surrounding PangoMarkup
> inside translateable messages:
>
> 3) Make gtk+/Pango have support for *attributes* instead of forcing
> everyone to use PangoMarkup. If I want a label to be bold, italic,
> smaller, or larger, I as a developer should be able to simply set
> attributes to that effect. Right now, it's too common to see something
> like this:
>
> msgid "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>"
> msgstr "<span size=\"xx-large\">Bug Buddy</span>"
>
> msgid "<span weight=\"bold\">Date & Time</span>"
> msgstr "<span weight=\"bold\">Datum och tid</span>"
>
> msgid "<b>Date & Time</b>"
> msgstr "<b>Datum och tid</b>"
>
> msgid "<span size=\"medium\"><b>No file</b></span>"
> msgstr "<span size=\"medium\"><b>Ingen fil</b></span>"
>
> msgid "No file"
> msgstr "Ingen fil"
>
> Often, you will have duplicated messages in the same file, just with
> different markup!
>
> If gtk+/Pango and libglade would make it possible for application
> writers to set *attributes* for these things instead of having to
> resort to PangoMarkup, all problems would be solved.
>
>
> Christian


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Abel Cheung   (GPG Key: 0xC67186FF)
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