Re: Variables placheholders comment

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 17:54 +0200, dooteo wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> There is a comment into gnome-packagekit which makes me doubt about my
> faith in gettext.
> 
> Here is the comment:
> 
> 	#. TRANSLATOR: "%i %s %i %s" are "%i minutes %i seconds"
> 	#. * Swap order with "%2$s %2$i %1$s %1$i if needed
> 	#. TRANSLATOR: "%i %s %i %s" are "%i hours %i minutes"
> 	#. * Swap order with "%2$s %2$i %1$s %1$i if needed
> 
> but, as far as I know, swap order (if translation needs) should be:
> 
> 	%4$s %3$i %2$s %1$i (which outputs such as 'seconds number minutes
> number' message)
> 
> So, placeholders should be unique. Am I wrong?

Right, the two messages are distinct, but they're merged
because they have the same msgid. If your language does
something like "# minutes # hours" but then something
else like "# (#) minutes (seconds)", this won't work.

That's why we have msgctxt. Developers should use it
in cases like this.

--
Shaun