Re: Adding context information for tooltips

["Christian Rose" <menthos gnome org>]

On 12/8/08, Claude Paroz <claude 2xlibre net> wrote:
[...]
>  > > I ḋ like to propose, since thses NC_ calls are being introduced now (at least
>  > > in GIMP - I don't know about other gnome-projects) to have teh context string
>  > > to distinguish between the Label and the Tooltip strings.
>  > >
>  > > In the example above, instead of having "channels-action" describing
>  > > both  "_Add to Selection" and "Add this channel to the current selection",
>  > > I'd propose describing the lable "_Add to selection"
>  > > with "channels-action-label" and the tooltip with "channels-action-tooltip".
[...]
>
> I think we should not mingle translator comments and context specifier.
>  The former should be used for adding verbose comments to help
>  translating a string (e.g. "This is a tooltip"), and the latter should
>  be used to disambiguate two identical strings where their context differ
>  (it would be the case here if the tooltip and the label were identical
>  strings).
>  If we abuse the context specifier, we'll end up with duplicated strings
>  when there should not.

Totally agree.
Translator comments are (or should be) there to help translators know
how a string is used.
Message context is there to disambiguate strings that would otherwise
be identical in English writing, but differ in contextual meaning.
Examples:

  NC_("keyboard-key", "_Add key")
  NC_("ssh-key", "_Add key")

  /* TRANSLATORS: This is shown in the menu. */
  N_("_Help")


Christian