Re: Bug reporting question

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

tis 2003-04-22 klockan 23.27 skrev Captain Rotundo:
> I just filed my first bug against an error in a string, and it got me
> thinking.  While working through some packages there are occassionally
> strings whose meaning are vague at best, and sometimes take
> investigation to determine what they mean.
> 
> for example strings that use the word "set" without making it clear if
> the meaning is "a grouping" or "selected" -- this may not be the worst
> situation, but there have been others that are far more confusing (at
> least to me) - should I file bugs against these strings? or is the
> wording the original author chooses his perogative? 

The developers decides themselves what wording to use, but we have
guidelines in GNOME (see the terminology sections of
http://developer.gnome.org/documents/style-guide/) and many developers
are in my experience just not aware what guidelines exist and that they
could have used the suggested terminology instead, and are happy to
change to that once they are made aware of it.

So file bug reports whenever you see strings that could be improved, and
use the style guide as a reference for suggested terminology where you
can.


> keep in mind I am not referring to strings that are erronious, and they
> may be perfectly clear when read in context by an english speaker, they
> are simply strings that are confusing durring translation.

Yeah, "set" may be an example of this. It's perfectly valid English but
may be ambigous for translators. There is a feature of gettext that
allows for programmers to put comments in front of messages that then
show up in po files. If necessary, you can file bugs and ask for such
helping comments to be added where needed.


Christian