Re: translator_credits

[Dafydd Harries <daf muse 19inch net>]

Ar 07/02/2004 am 22:28, ysgrifennodd Baris Cicek:
> Hello; 
> 
> I really don't know why they choosed translator_credits as a string
> instead of translator-credits or something else w/o underscore but it
> happened somehow. The problem occurs when you check for accelerator
> keys. That must not be a problem for KDE translations since they use &
> as accelerator key, but it sure does for Gnome. When you put your name
> there, of course w/o an underscore, translator programs like kbabel will
> warn you. Moreover, when you check the .po file for errors with 
> msgfmt --check-accelerators=_ , it will warn you, too. 
> 
> There are three ways to fix that problem indeed. First and hardest
> solution is to change that msgid to translator-credits or something
> else. But that needs change in all .po files and also changes in program
> sources for sure. 

It's conceivably possible that changing all instances of
"translator_credits" to "translator-credits" could be automated. It
would be a lot of work, though, given the gain I think it would bring.

> Second solution is to add a ,nocheck kinda tag to .po file entries. That
> also needs some code changes but only in msgfmt and translator tools.
> That kind of tag would be useable for some other things as well.

There are many different tools that use the PO format. I don't know how
each of them will behave if it comes across a non-standard tag in a #,
line. This doesn't seem too bad as long as it won't break tools that
support it. If we're going to do this, however, I'd suggest a name such
as "no-accelerators", which is more specific than "nocheck" and mirrors
tags such as "no-c-format".

> And the third solution, which need some attention indeed, is to skip
> checking of "transltor_credits" line on translator programmes, and more
> importantly on msgfmt. It's a one line code and it would be really
> helpful when you want 'errorless' translations. 

By "skip checking", do you mean "skip checking accelerators when the
msgid is 'translator_credits'". Note that, as far as I know,
"translator_credits" is not a standard magical string. I think it would
be more elegant to add a general facility to msgfmt for suppressing
warnings/errors - i.e. an option that says "don't check accelerators in
messages that match this string".

> Those are my opinions and solutions that I offer, but of course it's the
> maintainers who would decide. I wonder what you guys think.

Unfortunately, I don't see any of the above as a particularly elegant
solution. My current solution is simply to not use --check-accelerators
most of the time, but to use it periodically and fix mistakes as they
arise. A good time to use it would be soon before 2.6 gets released. :)

It doesn't matter too much if there are problems with accelerators in
development releases, and (in my opinion) it's not too difficult to
check everything before a stable release.

-- 
Dafydd