i18n -vs- strings

[Tom Tromey <tromey creche cygnus com>]

I've noticed a tendency in Gnome programs to use strings like "   Ok   "
in buttons and such.  Presumably this is done to make the spacing work
out correctly.

I think this is a bug.  The problem is, it isn't clear how such
strings should be translated (should the number of spaces be
preserved?  Should the string length?  What are the other buttons that
this is supposed to match?).  Also, since different instances will use
different numbers of spaces, this means that a given word will have to
be translated several different times.

Instead of using this hack, we should just mandate that
leading/trailing spaces are unacceptable for button labels.  If the
spacing is wrong, we should fix the spacing by doing the geometry
management correctly.

Does anybody disagree?

Tom