Re: don't include formatting tags in messages?

[Ole Laursen <olau hardworking dk>]

Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com> writes:

[...]

> It may be that there should be two classifications of tags within
> content, one for a set of canonical tags with known semantics (such as
> "bold", etc.) and another for more-or-less arbitrary tags that may be
> application-or-content-specific.  Application-specific tags should
> probably be localized if they aren't intended to be promoted to the
> general case, and if they are intended for re-presentation to the end
> user in some form.  Otherwise, if they are really "formatting" tags
> whose semantic information might be useful to listening meta-apps,
> please don't localize them!

I'm not completely sure about the point you are making, but speaking
as a translator, we never "translate" tags. We just move them around,
e.g. (running -> kører):

  The application is <big>running</big> now.
  Programmet <big>kører</big> nu.

With this example we obviously need to be able to do this. However,
most often the tags are on the form

  <b>This is a headline</b>

where they apply to the whole text, thus just introducing a source of
errors and more work for us. E.g., from gedit:

  <span weight=\"bold\" size=\"x-large\">Load</span>

This is a PITA. I hope Glade will soon provide a solution.

-- 
Ole Laursen
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~olau/