Re: Translatable propertiy descriptions in libgnomecanvas?

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Michael Meeks <michael ximian com> writes:

> Hi Gergo,
> 
> On Thu, 3 May 2001, ERDI Gergo wrote:
> > I noticed the following in gnome-canvas.c:
> > 	g_object_class_install_property
> > 	        (gobject_class, GROUP_PROP_Y,
> > 		 g_param_spec_double ("y",   
> >                                       _("Y"),
> >                                       _("Y"),
> >                                       -G_MAXDOUBLE, G_MAXDOUBLE, 0.0,
> >                                       (G_PARAM_READABLE | G_PARAM_WRITABLE)));
> > 
> > (and likewise for `X')
> > 
> > Is it an actual decision to translate property descriptions, or is it
> > a typo here?
> 
> 	Well, the idea is that the descriptions should be translated - and
> thus libgnomecanvas should depend on gettext etc. However, so far, no one
> has really bothered to spend much time writing verbose descriptions, and
> AFAIR many of the translatable doc strings are not entered ...
> 
> 	So, it's a nice little task to go through and add nice human
> readable documentation strings - and ask TimJ what they are there for, and
> what level of verbosity he wants.

We are marking all property names and descriptions in GTK+ for translation.
Whether this is a good idea, I'm not completely sure; it makes a 
lot of work for translators, and there is plenty more to programmer
documentation that won't be available in translation.

But if you wanted a program like glade to be translated, it would
be necessary to have the marked strings and translations.


The name and description (nick and blurb) should _definitely_ be
there. Adding a property without giving it a decent name and
a useful description is just lame.

 name: Human readable name of property; label in GUI builder
 description: Description of what the property is; tooltip in GUI
       builder, description of property in API docs.

Regard,s
                                        Owen