GNU gettext for hildon?

[Kyle Nitzsche <kyle nitzsche canonical com>]

Hi,

It appears that Hildon does not use standard GNU gettext.

The strings in code that are destined for exposure in the user  
interface are not meaningful English, which I believe they should be  
in order to facilitate/enable translation.

Consider these strings, obtained by grepping for "_(" in hildon-desktop:

hd-applications-menu.c:#define MENU_ITEM_EMPTY_SUBMENU_STRING  
_("tana_li_of_noapps")
hd-home-background-dialog.c:#define  
HILDON_HOME_FILE_CHOOSER_TITLE        _("home_ti_select_image")
hd-home-background-dialog.c:#define  
HILDON_HOME_FILE_CHOOSER_SELECT       _("home_bd_select_image")
hd-home-background-dialog.c:#define  
HILDON_HOME_FILE_CHOOSER_EMPTY        _("home_li_no_images")

One implication of this is that Hildon cannot be readily translated in  
systems where the strings in code are displayed as the basis for  
translations, like launchpad.net.

I also notice that the Hildon packages do not appear to be set up for  
intltool (hildon-desktop, at least, has no po/POTFILES.in file,  
required, I believe, by intltool. POTFILES.in lists files with exposed  
strings for intltool.)

So:

1) Should Hildon be modified to implement GNU gettext i81n?

2) Is the only change required fixing the strings to be meaningful  
English or are there other non-standard aspects?

3) Should Hildon packages be set up for intltool as a further step  
towards standardized i18n?

Cheers,
Kyle